Tip: Goals without e-commerce

We recently posted about what a visit is worth and the importance of setting goals in determining a visit's value. We often get asked, "How do I come up with goal values if my site is not an e-commerce site?" The answer: you can probably come up with intelligent values for your own set of goals. For example, if you know that 1 out of every 100 PDF downloads on your site results in a $500 sale, you can assign a value of $5 to that download. Other examples of goals are newsletter sign-ups, product sales, and visits to your "contact us" page.

Once you have defined a value for these pages (which you can set in the Goal Value field within your Goal Settings page), you can better conceptualize the value of your website and your online advertising. Then you can explain it to others with data, to back up any marketing or design choices you make. You can also measure the success of your design or marketing experiments, by observing goal values to find out what works best.

To learn more, take a look at the Conversion University article "Monetizing Non-Ecommerce Sites."

Posted by Jeff Gillis, Google Analytics Team

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New report added: AdWords Keyword Positions

Yesterday we added another report tailored specifically to AdWords users. The new report called AdWords Keyword Positions displays search position correlated with visits and conversions for each of your keywords. Drill down on any keyword to see its display position. Positions T1 through T3 indicate that your ad was promoted to the top of the search results page. Positions 1 through 8 indicate placement or location in the right-hand column of ads with 1 being the top position. 9 through 16 indicate the same on the second page of ads and so on. Here's an example of the position distribution of clicks on ads for searches on the keyword Google Pen in our account:



AdWords Keywords Positions is useful for advertisers in determining the value of your keywords and bid amounts in relation to your ad's actual position or rank on Google search results pages. This report can be used in conjunction with the Position Preference feature in AdWords to optimize around ad position in the following way: the AdWords Keyword Positions report in Google Analytics shows conversion rates and CTR for a keyword's results position -- and then, with Position Preference in AdWords, you can select that position as a target. We hope you find this level of integration between AdWords and Analytics to be useful.

You'll see data in this new report if:

• Your AdWords and Analytics accounts are linked
• You've turned on Auto-tagging in your AdWords account settings

One more thing: if you don't yet have a Google Analytics account, we've cleared out the waiting list for invitations. Once you've signed up within a few days you should get an email message with an invitation code.

Posted by Jeff Gillis, Google Analytics Team

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Segmenting Brand and Generic Paid Search Traffic in Google Analytics

Many advertisers with paid search campaigns advertise on queries mentioning their brand (e.g., “Motorola smartphone” for Motorola) and also on generic searches (e.g., “smartphone reviews”). Because the performance metrics for ads shown against brand and generic queries can be vastly different, many advertisers prefer to analyze these two groups separately.  For example, all else being equal, searches containing the advertiser’s brand name often have higher clickthrough-rates than those that don’t.

Automatic classification

To make analysis of brand and generic performance as easy as possible, we’re introducing a new feature which automatically identifies brand-aware paid search clicks tracked in Google Analytics. We use a combination of signals (including the clickthrough-rate, text string, domain name and others) to identify query terms which show awareness of your brand.  You can review our suggested brand terms and then accept or decline each of them. It’s also easy to add additional brand terms that we’ve missed. 

With the resulting list of brand terms, we classify your paid search traffic in GA so that you can split your “paid search” channel into two separate channels: “brand paid search” and “generic paid search”. This can be done both for Multi-Channel Funnels (for attribution purposes) and for the main Google Analytics channel grouping. See this straightforward step-by-step guide to get started.

Industry feedback

Back in 2012, George Michie from the Rimm-Kaufmann Group, a leading online marketing agency, called analyzing brand and generic paid search together “the cardinal sin of paid search”. We showed him a preview of our new solution and here’s his reaction:

"I've been arguing for many years that advertisers should look at their brand and generic paid search separately. There are massive differences in overall performance - but also in more specific areas, like attribution and new customer acquisition. 

Google Analytics now makes it a lot easier for advertisers to segment brand and generic paid search into separate channels. I'm sure this feature will help many more advertisers measure these important differences - and more importantly, take action on these new insights."

Getting started

Finally: note that this feature works for all paid search advertising, not just Google AdWords. It will roll out to all users in the coming weeks.

To get started, use the step-by-step guide to set up separate brand paid search and generic paid search channels. We’ve already suggested brand terms for every GA view with sufficient paid search traffic.

Posted by: Frank Uyeda, Software Engineer, Google Analytics

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Introducing the new Google Analytics Partner Gallery

Google Analytics has a vibrant ecosystem of analytics practitioners, advocates, and developers that drive great conversations, learnings, and sharing among passionate users. A central part of this ecosystem is partners, which can help users quickly increase the business value of Google Analytics through implementation expertise, analysis, and integrations.

To make it easier to find services and apps that are important to your business, we’ve re-launched the App Gallery as the Partner Gallery, the new destination to find partners and review their offerings. It includes:

Services by Google Analytics Certified Partners

Certified Partners are vetted by Google and meet rigorous qualification standards. This includes agencies and consultancies who offer web analytics implementations, analysis services and website testing and optimization services.

Apps by Google Analytics Technology Partners

Ready-to-use applications that extend Google Analytics in new and exciting ways. This includes solutions that help analysts, marketers, IT teams, and executives get the most out of Google Analytics and complement functionality.

The Partner Gallery includes new features and improvements:

• A brand new look and layout.
• A combined view of both services and apps so you don’t need to visit multiple sites to find a solution.
• New search capabilities and category selection making it easier to filter and find what you’re looking for.
• Google Analytics Certified Partners are sorted based on your location to find partners that have an office near you.
• Media assets like screenshots / videos / case studies that highlight customer success stories and illustrate app features.
• Comments and ratings to review user experiences and provide feedback.

Visit the Partner Gallery to browse partner services and apps. If you’re interested in the Google Analytics Certified Partner or Technology Partner programs, learn how to become a partner.

Pete Frisella, Developer Advocate, Google Analytics Developer Relations team

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What's a visit worth?

What is the average value of a visit from a certain website worth to you? Can you, for instance, measure the average value of a visit to your site from someone who clicks on your AdWords ad as compared to someone who gets to your website by typing your URL directly into their browser? (See google[cpc] versus direct[none] in the image below - click to enlarge.)

The answer can be found in the sometimes overlooked $/Visits column found in the Google Analytics conversion reports, including Campaign Conversion, Source Conversion, Overall Keyword Conversion and CPC vs Organic Conversion. In fact, because this metric is found in so many reports, you can compare per-visit values for organic search referrals, paid keywords, CPC campaigns -- and almost anything else you can think of. It's a great comparison metric that can help you shift your marketing budget to high-performing traffic sources and keywords.





To calculate $/Visits, Google Analytics adds and averages the total "revenue" from your conversions. This revenue might be from e-commerce sales or from static values that you assign to non-ecommerce goals. Thus, as with any endeavor, goals and goal values are necessary. You'll need to set them up in order to see metrics such as $/Visits as well as ROI and RPC (Revenue per Click), which you'll find indispensable for optimizing your keyword buys.

To learn how to set up goals, take a look at the Help Center article "How do I set up goals?"


Posted by Alden DeSoto, Google Analytics Team

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Catching up

You may have noticed that we make changes to Google Analytics from time to time. (We call them improvements and we hope you agree.) Since we've just started posting to this blog, we'd like to catch you up on a few of the improvements we've made recently. By the way, you can also learn about new features and other changes through a link at the bottom right of your account's Analytics Settings page when you log into Google Analytics. The link is called What's new with Google Analytics. It's a brief and frequently updated Help Center page listing recent changes.

So what's new? We've added support for Safari browsers. We've re-enabled the Site Overlay report to work more reliably on sites with dynamic content. And to make it easier for you to see data about your dynamic pages, we've replaced the Page Query Terms report with the new Dynamic Content report, and added query terms to the Top Content report. We've made it possible to assign the order in which filters should be applied (via the Assign Filter Order link on your Profile Settings page). And you can now edit your time zone and rename your accounts.

Last but definitely not least, we're sending out more invitations all the time. We won't stop until every advertiser, publisher, and website owner on the planet has access to sophisticated, actionable, and free web analytics.

Posted by Alden DeSoto, Google Analytics Team

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New Google Analytics Premium Feature: Unsampled Reports in the Management API

Today, we are adding Unsampled Reports to the Google Analytics Management API for Google Analytics Premium customers. 

Accurate analysis when you’re not online

Enterprise analytics users need to execute complicated, ad hoc reports and download them into their own systems. The Unsampled Reports feature provides accurate analysis of large unsampled data sets. 

Easily integrate data

This enhancement to our Management API offers a new way to access unsampled data, so you’re free to spend more time on other strategic areas of your business. It also increases the integrity of the data in your internal systems and provides the flexibility to access your data in a way that best fits your business needs. For example, you can integrate the API into your Business Intelligence (BI) system to retrieve unsampled data, and to provide accurate metrics that support your critical business decisions.  

How it works

When you create an Unsampled Report using the API, it is processed in an offline manner. The completed reports are available through the API and under the Customization tab in the Unsampled Reports section. You can define whether you would like the report to be saved in Google Drive or in Google Cloud Storage. Read the Unsampled Reports API documentation for more details.

Posted by Yaniv Yaakubovich, Product Manager, Google Analytics Premium

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Moving from Data to Decisions in the next Analytics Academy course

Today we’re excited to announce our next Analytics Academy course, Ecommerce Analytics: From Data to Decisions. As the name suggests, we’ve designed this course specifically to help marketers and analysts who work in ecommerce understand how Analytics data can be used to make decisions and take actions that improve their ecommerce performance. 

In the course, you’ll join instructor Justin Cutroni to explore topics through the lens of a fictional online retailer, The Great Outdoors. This practical example will help bring common ecommerce questions to life with relevant planning, reporting and analysis examples. 

By participating in the course, you’ll learn how to:

• select and customize meaningful reports that align with your ecommerce measurement plan
• use segmentation to compare interesting subsets of your online audience
• and conduct actionable in-depth analyses in Google Analytics.

In addition to teaching you how to make the most of reporting features like segmentation, the course has a special focus on the new Enhanced Ecommerce for Google Analytics. This set of new features, which was announced in May, helps ecommerce companies understand the customer journey and merchandising tactics at a much deeper level. The course will introduce you to powerful analysis tools, like the Product List Performance report, the Shopping Behavior report and the Checkout Behavior report.

Sign up for the Ecommerce Analytics course now and join us when it opens on July 8, 2014. 

Happy Learning!

Post By: Christina Macholan & The Google Analytics Education Team

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Welcome to the official Google Analytics Blog!

We are pleased to welcome you to the official Google Analytics blog. Now you can stay up to date on the latest info posted by the Google Analytics team. You'll learn about product changes as we make them, whether it's a new feature you’ve asked for, or a fix for something that needed fixing. We’ll let you know when we add new reports (see below) and will ask for your feedback too. And we’ll frequently post tips and best practices, as well as spotlight helpful resources such as Conversion University and the Google Analytics Help Center.

Expect to see posts from a variety of people on our team. Sometimes they'll be informal and brief; others will be more structured. We hope you'll find all of them useful.

And now for our first product update (which you may have already noticed): there is a new report in Google Analytics called AdWords Analysis.

You can see it within your Analytics reports now (located in Marketing Optimization-->Search Engine Marketing).

The AdWords Analysis report was released two weeks ago and shows you the ROI for every Campaign, Ad Group, and keyword in your AdWords account. You may find it useful as you monitor and optimize your Ad Groups and keywords. In order to get the full benefit of this report, you’ll need to link your AdWords account with your Analytics account and have auto-tagging turned on.

Enjoy, and subscribe to the feed, or visit often to learn about updates like this within hours of their creation.

Posted by Jeff Gillis, Google Analytics Team

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