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Last April, we gave you a few tips on using Website Optimizer and Google Analytics to improve your business online. As a follow-up, we announced the Website Workout contest last June. Four businesses were selected to improve their conversion rates using the data they gained from Website Optimizer.

The results are in! Find out how the winners improved their conversion rates here. I think you'll be surprised how a small change can make a big difference. For more information on how to optimize your site, check out the Website Optimizer Blog.

Posted by Andrew Gomez, Business Marketing Team

What happens in Vegas.. doesn't have to stay in Vegas. At least not when you're going there to attend the Google Analytics and Website Optimizer Seminars for Success! Spend one to three days learning about Google Analytics and Google Website Optimizer. Come back armed with best practices and tips from the experts on how to use them to improve your business.

These courses are ideal for marketers, web designers, web analysts and anyone who wants to improve their online business savvy.

Introductory Course- Wednesday, January 21
The introduction and user training course is designed to provide a high-level overview of the products and will cover key features and reports. It's perfect for a marketer or account manager who is interested in learning more about how Google Analytics works, and who wants to understand how to use the information in reports to make decisions.

Advanced Course - Thursday, January 22
The advanced and technical implementation course is for those who need hands-on implementation training. This is a great class for those of you who need to install and set up Google Analytics on sites. You'll learn about and discuss different ways to set up Google Analytics to get the types of information that you need.

Google Website Optimizer - Friday, January 23
Learn how to make landing page testing work for you. You will hear from the experts on using Google Website Optimizer and testing the pages of your website to find out what works best for your visitors. Best practices will be covered, and you will leave with real hands-on experience running A/B/N and multivariate tests using Google Website Optimizer!

Capacity is limited. Register now: http://services.google.com/ads_inquiry/awseminarsWe look forward to seeing you there!

Posted by Eva Woo, Google Analytics Team

If you've added a profile recently to your account or read a help article that discusses the tracking code, you may have noticed an addition to the tracking code snippet. You do not need to change the tracking code in your existing pages, although doing so will add a layer of functionality that I'll explain in a minute. Here is the updated snippet, with the additions in bold.

<script type="text/javascript">
var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");
document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));
</script>

<script type="text/javascript">
try {
var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-50020-1");
pageTracker._trackPageview();
} catch(err) {}
</script>

So why the change? Adding the try and catch to the snippet removes the possibility that your visitor sees a JavaScript message that doesn't apply to her. It's a fairly rare occurrence because messages like these (frequently in the form of an alert box) can only appear if JavaScript messaging has been enabled on the browser. Most browsers have JavaScript messaging turned off by default, but sometimes people unintentionally turn it on. For those visitors who have enabled messaging, the try and catch will have the effect of halting any messages from the Google Analytics tracking code snippet.

As a best practice, we're including the try and catch in the snippet and updating our help materials to reflect this change.

Posted by Christina Park, Google Analytics Team

In the spirit of New Year's resolutions, one of ours is to work even harder in 2009 to hear what you have to say. My resolution to work out more frequently at the gym has already gone out the window (the Golden Globes took precedence last week), but I promise that listening to you is a resolution we'll follow through on! To help kick things off, here are a few ways you can get your questions answered and provide feedback to the Google Analytics team.

• As of today, you can post comments on new features and developments directly in the blog
  
• For support questions or more in-depth conversations, use the help forum
• For feature requests, you can use this form
  
• To get hands-on implementation support, speak to an Authorized Consultant
  
• Lastly, to share best practices, key learnings or case studies, email ga-feedback [at] google [dot] com (no support questions please)
  

Looking forward to hearing your thoughts!

Posted by Sebastian Tonkin, Google Analytics Team

It only makes sense that Analytics should be able to track sites created by another Google product, Google Sites. Google Sites is an easy-to-use online application to make team websites. Multiple users can collaborate on editing the site at once online, and it's all hosted by Google for free.

Installing the tracking code for your Google Sites website requires just a few simple steps. After creating a new account and profile for your website within Analytics, another JavaScript code snippet will be generated with a new tracking ID for your site (the tracking ID from within the code snippet is always in this format: UA-XXXXXXX-XX). You can just paste the new tracking ID into your Google Sites settings page under Other Stuff > Statistics.



Once you set up Analytics for your Google Site website, you'll have to remember to apply the code to all the existing and future pages for your website. For full instructions on configuring your site with Analytics, please follow these instructions.

Posted by Christina Park, Google Analytics Team

Adding a search box to your site not only offers your visitors an important ease-of-use feature, but provides you, the site owner, with powerful insight into what your visitors really expect from your site. If you don't have a search box on your site, you might consider using the Google Custom Search Engine (both free and paid versions are available). If you already have a search box, make sure that you're tracking visitor search activity.

We want to show you the many ways to take immediate action on the data in this report, so we've added a video on tracking internal Site Search to our "Google Analytics in 60 Seconds" series. You can view the video below and learn more about how to make effective use of the internal Site Search information in this article, Five Questions to Ask of Your Site Search Data.



Posted by Melissa Hsieh, Google Analytics Team

What kind of analytics user are you? Our Analytics Evangelist, Avinash Kaushik, has created a "Nine-Point Checklist of Analytics Awesomeness" to help you find out. Are you an Emperor or a Newbie? You'll need to have mastered all 9 of the below to call yourself Emperor. If you're doing less than 3, you're still a Newbie.

9. Get external context to your performance (benchmarking)
8. Internal site search baby! Rock it!
7. Search, organic, get good at it
6. Landing pages, landing pages, landing pages
5. Goals, goals, goals (& goal values)
4. Enable deep e-commerce tracking and analysis
3. Your only true analytics BFF: bounce rate
2. Powerfully leverage custom reports
1. Give me segmentation or give me death!

Posted by Sebastian Tonkin, Google Analytics Team

We're pleased to announce that a Google Analytics Seminar for Success is coming to Atlanta on Tuesday, February 17 and Wednesday, February 18. Seats are limited so be sure to register right away! Here's the run-down:

Day 1 - Business Insights: Delivered from an analyst's perspective, Day 1 will focus on what reports to look at and why. You'll also find out about performance indicators that can alert you of potential problems. Day 1 also covers the latest Google Analytics tools: Advanced Segmentation, Custom Reports and Motion Charts.

Topics Include:

• Introduction to web analytics
• Website testing with Google Website Optimizer
• Google Analytics reporting features
• Sharing Google Analytics data
• Custom dashboards
• Understanding site visitors
• Tracking online marketing campaigns
• Evaluating site content and user navigation
• Understanding goals and conversion funnels

Day 2 - Technical Insights: Day 2 will cover how to properly set up Google Analytics from a technical standpoint. From filters to code customization, all the technical topics you need are covered on Day 2.

Topics Include:

• Google Analytics architecture overview
• Learning about regular expressions
• Improving your data with filters
• Setting up goals and funnels
• Implementing e-commerce tracking
• Configuring custom segmentation
• Introduction to event tracking
• Tracking websites with multiple domains/subdomains
• Code customization

Posted by Eva Woo, Google Analytics Team

Motion Charts make it possible for you to perform both high-level analysis (such as identifing long-term trends) and targeted analysis (aimed at gauging the impact of a specific change or event).

In today's post, we'll focus on identifying trends. Here are some examples of high-level trends you might want to examine using motion charts:

1. How the value of a keyword changes over time
2. How targeting traffic from a channel improves (or decreases) the quality of your visitors over time
   
3. How landing page optimization affects visitor behavior
   
4. How engagement metrics relate to your conversion rate
   
5. How your visitor profile changes over time
   

To get to Motion Charts, just click "Visualize" at the top of any report that has a table with two or more values. Reports from which you can launch Motion Charts include New vs. Returning Visitors, Languages, Referring Sites, Keywords, Top Content and many, many others.
When to use a motion chart instead of just a graph

A standard graph shows data across two dimensions, (X-axis and Y-axis). On the other hand, Motion Charts let you look at data across up to five dimensions (X-axis, Y-axis, Color, Size and Time). If you're having flashbacks to high school math class, don't panic! Let's look at an example. We'll use Motion Charts to spot a trend of increasing visits from users of Internet Explorer on the Windows operating system.

Example: Spotting a trend in the Browser / OS Report

Start by navigating to the Browser and OS Report.

Imagine that you are the online marketing manager for a successful E-Commerce business. It is Friday afternoon and your CEO phones with a request. "I've seen our sales numbers, but I need more data. How many of our website visits and sales relate to men's products versus women's products?"
Your CEO almost sounds apologetic and explains that she needs the information tomorrow. "Of course," you reply, and hang up the phone wondering how you are going to pull this off.

After considering it, you realize that this may not be so hard after all. All you need to do is:

1. Find out if there is a unique URL identifier that distinguishes men's and women's products
   
2. Create two advanced segments based on the unique URL identifier: one for men's products, and one for women's products
3. Apply these segments to the reports to compare metrics/trends for each product category

That's it - it's as easy as 1, 2, 3!

Step 1 - Review your website URL structure