Analytics

Google Analytics continues to get new and improved features. In the past few weeks we've seen load time and social tracking as new additions to the Analytics family. The newest toy is trackbacks. If you're unfamiliar with trackbacks, here's a very simplified explanation: When Blog A links to Blog B, Blog B is automatically notified about the link from Blog A. What this means for you is...

You may have noticed that the Google Analytics team have been very busy over the past few weeks, pushing out updates to all accounts. The latest addition is to the Site Speed area, where you can see a collection of page loading times on a per user basis  rather than en masse. So how is this different from before? Well, the old way that data was collected was...

[caption id="attachment_9938" align="alignright" width="253"] High bounce rates are only good for some! Image Source: Mark Robinson[/caption] Far too often, search campaigns focus on vanity metrics like unique visitors or page views - but what if an increase in page views and visits has no effect on your conversions? How can you identify what is going wrong? Introducing the bounce rate, one of Google Analytics' most neglected metrics. The...

A few weeks ago I spoke about Tracking Tweets and Likes in Google Analytics. While checking one of my many Google Analytics accounts, I came across a new area within the Traffic Sources section called Social. As this  hasn't been mentioned on the official Analytics blog, this may be a beta feature Google are currently experimenting with, so it could disappear at any time. It seems purposed...

Google has become sensitive to the privacy concerns of its users. This has created a bit of a problem if you're tracking your organic keywords through Analytics. The search giant is now hiding the keyword for signed-in users who land on your website.  Google has tried to downplay number of visitors this would effect, previously estimating that visits resulting from hidden keywords would be in the...

There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics. - Mark Twain While Mark may have a point, Google Analytics has a few hidden gems that I'm going to share with you today - three, actually. 1. New opportunities This one seems a bit obvious, but unless you know what to look for you may miss it. First of all, you'll need to filter your traffic...

If you've implemented social sharing buttons ("Like This Page" or "Tweet This") then you're probably wishing you could track these metrics inside your analytics account. Here I'm going to show you how to do it, in English and not techno-babble (though I am assuming you have a basic understanding of HTML). Step 1: Insert this file Social Tracking.js on every page of your website, right after your regular Analytics code. How...