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13 items tagged "Web and Tracking"

Related tags: Analytics [+], Spam, Search, SEO, Promotion, Measurements, Directories, Conversion

Search Engine Roundtable

• 

  Google Analytics Moves Old Version Link To Footer

  Fetched: April 20th, 2012, 4:08am CEST by Barry Schwartz

  Tags:  Web Analytics Tracking  

  The Google Analytics Forum is lighting up with questions about how to access the old version of Google Analytics. I linked to one thread, but there are plenty of threads with this question popping up.

  The link is still there, but Google moved the link to the old interface all the way in the footer of the page. Google really wants you to switch to the new version of Google Analytics and by almost hiding the link, they think they can convert more people over to it.

  Google Analytics event tweeted it:

  To answer the most common question today: the old version of GA is still available in the footer (for now). We do recommend trying V5 :)

  — Google Analytics (@googleanalytics) April 18, 2012

  So if you can't find it, scroll down.

  Forum discussion at Google Analytics Forum.

  
  

• 

  Google Analytics New Social Reports With $$$

  Fetched: March 29th, 2012, 1:29pm CEST by Barry Schwartz

  Tags:  Web Analytics Tracking  

  A week ago Google announced on the Google Analytics blog a new set of reports named Social reports that enables webmasters and marketers bridge the gap between social media and how those convert to your business metrics, such as conversions, revenues and more.

  Google said the goal of these reports are three fold:

  • Identify the full value of traffic coming from social sites and measure how they lead to direct conversions or assist in future conversions
  • Understand social activities happening both on and off of your site to help you optimize user engagement and increase social key performance indicators (KPIs)
  • Make better, more efficient data-driven decisions in your social media marketing programs

  Social Overview Report:

  Social Conversions Report:

  Social Sources Report:

  Social Plugins Report:

  Who is part of this? Which networks? Not Twitter or Facebook but these guys are, AllVoices, Badoo, Blogger, Delicious, Digg, Diigo, Disqus, Echo, Gigya, Google+, Google Groups, Hatena, Livefyre, Meetup, Read It Later, Reddit, Screen Rant, SodaHead, TypePad, VKontakte, and yaplog!.

  Forum discussion at Google Analytics Help.

  
  

• 

  Not Provided To Spike When Firefox Adds Google SSL As Default

  Fetched: March 22nd, 2012, 6:00pm CET by Barry Schwartz

  Tags:  Web Analytics Tracking  

  Christopher Soghoian noticed that the developer trunk of Firefox added as a default to use Google's HTTPS search.

  Danny Sullivan did some information seeking and confirmed Firefox has intentions to release this as the default Google search behavior in the near future, as long as the tests go well. Firefox told him:

  We are currently testing the change to use SSL for built-in Google searches in our Firefox nightly channel. If no issues are uncovered, it will move through our Aurora and Beta release channels before eventually shipping to all our Firefox users. This will include migrating the changes to our non-English version of Firefox, as well.

  What this means for SEOs and webmasters, as well as marketers, is that the "Not Provided" in your analytics "keyword" reports will just increase. Right now, I am at about 30% of all my keyword data says "not provided." I wouldn't be surprised if that jumps to 40 or 50% once this is rolled out.

  Danny gets more into the hypocrisy of this change, as well as the impact it will have on everyone.

  A WebmasterWorld thread has some early reaction from the webmaster community:

  That's just.. lame, FireFox getting canibalized by Chrome in 2 years, my pessimistic prediction.

  The thing is, what is to stop Google from adding this to Chrome?

  Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

  
  

• 

  Email Scheduling & PDF Reports Added To New Google Analytics

  Fetched: March 22nd, 2012, 6:00pm CET by Barry Schwartz

  Tags:  Web Analytics Tracking  

  One of the main features analytics junkies have been waiting for in the new Google Analytics interface was the ability to schedule out PDF formatted analytics reports. That feature seems to have been quietly added recently.

  A Google Analytics Help thread has an update from one Analytics user saying, "Good news!!!! Pdf and email functions are now available. I saw them this morning. How crazy of them to leave them out for so long."

  This is a feature that has been promised since the new interface was launched months ago. Google kept saying it will be available in weeks, but nothing showed up. It is now there. Here is a screen shot from my analytics account:

  Most relied on the old interface to send out scheduled emails and now they can remove them from the old interface and add them to the new interface.

  Forum discussion at Google Analytics Help.

  
  

• 

  Your Search Traffic Might Be Labeled As Referrer Traffic: Google HTTP Referer Change

  Fetched: March 21st, 2012, 11:00pm CET by Barry Schwartz

  Tags:  Web Analytics Tracking  

  Monday night Google posted an update on the Google Webmaster blog named Upcoming changes in Googleâs HTTP Referrer.

  It read:

  Starting in April, for browsers with the appropriate support, we will be using the "referrer" meta tag to automatically simplify the referring URL that is sent by the browser when visiting a page linked from an organic search result. This results in a faster time to result and more streamlined experience for the user.

  Very confusing - I thought, why would Google want to label organic search traffic as direct referrer traffic? Is that a privacy thing? Okay, don't pass keyword data, which you stopped doing since Google defaulted to SSL search. But now to take away the knowledge of the traffic coming from search vs a direct hit? Really?

  You can read how confused I was about this on Google+.

  Danny Sullivan reached out to Google for more details and got more information for his story named How A Google Change May Mistakenly Turn Search Traffic Into Referral Traffic.

  (1) This only currently impacts browsers that can support the HTTP referer, which is only the latest version of Chrome.

  (2) Google Analytics will automatically adjust to make sure this traffic is not labeled as direct traffic but rather search traffic.

  (3) Google will communicate to other Analytics companies about the change in hope they adjust their software as well.

  The issue here is, of my Google organic traffic, 33% of it is from Chrome users. And Google sends this site about 90% of it's search traffic overall. I am already missing 30%+ of my keyword data due to the (not provided) issue with SSL search.

  Yea, Google has keyword data in Webmaster Tools, but it is not enough.

  In any event, Danny's story really digs into the issues here. Also Web Analytics Land gets more technical on what is changing.

  Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld, Google+ Pedro Dias and Google+ Danny Sullivan.

  
  

• 

  Real Time Google Analytics

  Fetched: October 3rd, 2011, 6:04pm CEST by Barry Schwartz

  Tags:  Web Analytics Tracking  

  Thursday, while I was offline again, Google announced a cool new feature to Google Analytics to show real time statistics.

  Google launched "Google Analytics Real-Time: a set of new reports that show what's happening on your site as it happens." Here is a screen shot:

  Some of you may see this feature now, for those that don't - you can sign up to get access to it early over here. Until then, be on the lookout for it.

  How real time are these real time reports? People are saying about 3-4 hour delay. So that does not seem all that real time to me, does it?

  They also launched Google Analytics Premium for more services and support at a cost.

  Forum discussion at Google Analytics Help, DigitalPoint Forums, WebmasterWorld and Sphinn.

  
  

• 

  Google Analytics Session Bug Fixed

  Fetched: August 18th, 2011, 7:25pm CEST by Barry Schwartz

  Tags:  Web Analytics Tracking  

  Earlier this week, Google announced they have changed how they define sessions in Google Analytics.

  That change should have only impacted about 1% or less of the traffic reports. But webmasters and marketers were noticing major changes and felt something was wrong. Guess what, there was something wrong.

  Last night, Google updated their blog post explaining the issue and said it is being fixed now. Google said:

  We identified an issue responsible for unexpected traffic changes following our recent update to how sessions are defined in Google Analytics. A fix was released at 2pm PST Tuesday August 16th.

  The issue affected some sites using the following configurations:

  1. If a user comes to a customerâs site with a space in some part of their traffic source data, then revisit the same landing page during that session by refreshing the page or later pressing the back button, a new session will be created for every hit to that page. (Clicking a link elsewhere on the site that leads back to the page should not matter.)

  2. Google Analytics implementations using multiple trackers (an unsupported configuration) are also affected when a space is included in the traffic source data. These sites will see fewer visits from new visitors, and more visits from returning visitors (with some variation due to different implementations).

  Again, a fix for this issue was released yesterday. Please let us know if you continue to see unexpected traffic changes. We apologize for the inconvenience and thank you for your patience and continued support.

  Good to see Google was able to resolve this pretty quickly.

  Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld.

  
  

• 

  Google Analytics Traffic Change? Here Is Why.

  Fetched: August 17th, 2011, 10:15am CEST by Barry Schwartz

  Tags:  Web Analytics Tracking  

  Last Thursday, Google announced how they have made a change to how they define a session.

  Before Thursday Google Analytics ends a session when:

  • More than 30 minutes have elapsed between pageviews for a single visitor.
  • At the end of a day.
  • When a visitor closes their browser.

  Now, Google Analytics ends a session when:

  • More than 30 minutes have elapsed between pageviews for a single visitor.
  • At the end of a day.
  • When any traffic source value for the user changes. Traffic source information includes: utm_source, utm_medium, utm_term, utm_content, utm_id, utm_campaign, and gclid.

  So what impact is this having on your traffic reports in Google Analytics? It has been enough time to see the complaints in the threads.

  But first, look at the comments in the post:

  Confirming what others have stated: This change is wreaking havoc on our data. It looks like non-paid search traffic is up 30%, but corresponding pageviews are down 30%. And all gains in traffic are Repeat Visits -- which would suggest the second pageview from a paid source (utm_xxxxx=yyyyy) is creating a new session, and dumping the visit data into the wrong channel.

  Good Grief, less then a 1% change! "Based on our research" I would love to know how you conducted this research.

  I am seeing 20% increase in visits, I though I had finally broken free of Panda!

  How I am supposed to evaluate these new metrics on steroids vs my previous metrics?

  Today vs Yesterday Visits (+19.59%) Pages/Visit (-17.66%) Bounce Rate (+13.80%) Avg. Time on Site (-22.62%) % New Visits (-18.03%)

  Same here, since this "update", organic traffic has so-said doubled and my Adwords traffic is now around twice as high as the number of clicks on adwords which can only be wrong.

  There are also complaints in the WebmasterWorld forums and at Sphinn.

  Are you upset? Did it make significant changes to your reports?

  Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and Sphinn.

  
  

• 

  Google Webmaster Tools With +1 Data

  Fetched: July 1st, 2011, 7:33am CEST by Barry Schwartz

  Tags:  Web Analytics Tracking  

  The Google Webmaster Tools announced you can now get +1 metrics directly in your Google Webmaster Tools account.

  Currently it only works with +1s and shows you three reports, they include:

  • The Search Impact report gives you an idea of how +1's affect your organic search traffic. You can find out if your clickthrough rate changes when personalized recommendations help your content stand out. Do this by comparing clicks and impressions on search results with and without +1 annotations. Google will only show statistics on clickthrough rate changes when you have enough impressions for a meaningful comparison.
  • The Activity report shows you how many times your pages have been +1'd, from buttons both on your site and on other pages (such as Google search).
  • Finally, the Audience report shows you aggregate geographic and demographic information about the Google users who've +1'd your pages. To protect privacy, Google will only show audience information when a significant number of users have +1'd pages from your site.

  Here is a screen shot:

  For more details on these reports, see Google's help section.

  Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld & DigitalPoint Forums.

  
  

• 

  See Google Analytics Social Tracking Enabled

  Fetched: July 1st, 2011, 7:33am CEST by Barry Schwartz

  Tags:  Web Analytics Tracking  

  Last night, Google Analytics and crew announced the feature of tracking social interactions within Google Analytics. The new feature lets you track people who socially engage in your content, from +1s to Facebook Likes, to commenting and Tweeting the content.

  Google adds a new option to the new Google Analytics interface for "social" under the Visitors menu. The features include:

  • The Social Engagement report lets you see how site behavior changes for visits that include clicks on +1 buttons or other social actions. This allows you to determine, for example, whether people who +1 your pages during a visit are likely to spend more time on your site than people who don't.
  • The Social Actions report lets you track the number of social actions (+1 clicks, Tweets, etc) taken on your site, all in one place.
  • The Social Pages report allows you to compare the pages on your site to see which are driving the highest the number of social actions.

  I enabled it late last night and this morning some of the late traffic to this site showed up with social metrics. You can see some Facebook like tracking and I even enabled "commenting" as a social interaction.

  Social Engagements Overall:

  Social Actions:

  Social Pages:

  Honestly, I can't wait to see the data after a full day of tracking.

  How do you do this? There are instructions for Google +1 here and for other social tracking here.

  Forum discussion at WebmasterWorld and DigitalPoint Forums.

  
  

• 

  Search Query Reports Directly In Google Analytics

  Fetched: June 8th, 2011, 8:04pm CEST by Barry Schwartz

  Tags:  Web Analytics Tracking  

  Google announced you can now request to be part of a pilot to add the search engine optimization reports to your Google Analytics reports. Yes, indeed!

  We expected deeper integration and only a few months after, we are getting it! The search query reports within Google Webmaster Tools is passing through to Google Analytics.

  After you gain access to this data in Google Analytics (again, pilot only), you will see a new menu for "search engine optimization" under the Traffic Sources section.

  Then you get access to Search Query data and landing page reports. That includes impressions, rankings, clicks and click-through rates directly from the search engines. You get it by search query and by landing page. Very useful data. Here is a chart:

  Plus, you can use the advanced reports to meld deeper insight into your site by taking this data and applying it elsewhere.

  Pretty cool, no?

  Request to be in the pilot today.

  Forum discussion at Google Webmaster Help.

  Note: This story was written earlier this week and scheduled to be published today.

  
  

• 

  New Google Analytics V5 Now Available To Everyone

  Fetched: April 24th, 2011, 10:27am CEST by Barry Schwartz

  Tags:  Web Analytics Tracking  

  The Google Analytics Blog announced that the new version of Google Analytics: Version 5 is now available to everyone.

  To see it for yourself, sign into Google Analytics and at the top click on the red "New Version" link. Don't worry, you can currently toggle back and forth between the old and new version.

  We have many more details on this new version over here.

  Here is a list of new features:

  • A redesigned Google Analytics platform to enable major new functionality
  • A streamlined interface to make it easier to get to the information you want
  • Improved report performance for faster reports
  • A completely redesigned, faster interface (read more).
  • Multiple dashboardsâ"build a custom dashboard for each department (read more).
  • Event Goals! Track your PDF downloads as goals with events, or configure 2 minutes play time on a video as a goal. Read Kayden's great blog post on this feature.
  • More powerful custom reportsâ"you can pre-filter reports and build additional data views (read more).
  • New Term Cloud visualization.

  Features coming soon include Exporting reports to PDF, Emailing reports, Migrating a custom report from the current Analytics version to the new version, Linking a new AdWords or AdSense account and In-Page Analytics.

  Forum discussion at Sphinn and Search Engine Roundtable Forums.

  
  

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  Non Google Analytics Admins Can't Remove Profiles

  Fetched: March 31st, 2011, 2:26am CEST by Barry Schwartz

  Tags:  Web Analytics Tracking  

  Let's say you are an SEO, webmaster or marketing consultant for a third-party company. That company grants you user access to their Google Analytics data so that you can analyze their traffic and find areas in which you can improve their site. Then one day, you no longer work for that client but they did not remove your access to their Analytics.

  Did you know that the only way to remove Google Analytics profiles is for an administrator to either delete the profile completely or remove your access individually? What if they don't? Then you have profiles in your account you no longer want or need.

  For some, that can be frustrating and a bit of annoyance. Personally, it wouldn't bother me because I search for profiles but hey - I can see it being annoying for some.

  A Google Analytics Help thread from 2009 still has people who are upset.

  Heck, even the new interface doesn't give you a way to do it.

  Admins can remove profiles:

  Users can't remove profiles:

  New Profile Pages:

  Forum discussion at Google Analytics Help.