It is finally happening! The event that all digital analytics and research professionals were looking forward to- the DAA India Symposium. Participants get to meet, listen to and interact with industry leaders and world class speakers.

The Digital Analytics India Symposium is being held on 8th June in Bangalore. Leading IT, business process outsourcing, and consulting company-Cognizant is hosting this event at the Leela Palace, Bangalore. The daylong event will serve the purpose to educate and aid in the professional development of digital analytics professionals. This education program will have world class speakers taking the stage to throw light on the latest trends and techniques being followed in the industry.

This year’s event will have a keynote: ‘Welcome to era of Digital Intelligence’ by Joe Stanhope- Senior Analyst, Forrester Research. Other speakers are from leading global institutions like US Bank, Dell and more. Interested digital analytics and research professionals can get industry insights as well as a chance to network with industry leaders. Registrations for the event are open, and you can find more details here.

Post from: PageTraffic SEO Blog Now updated thrice a day!

Digital Analytics India Symposium to Be Held in Bangalore on 8th June!

"The Google Analytics team has announced that webmasters will now be able to see backlink URLs, post titles, and more right within the new Social reports. As Google threw further light on these automated reports, “These reports provide another layer of social insight showing which of your content attracts links, and enables you to keep track of conversations across other sites that link to your content. Most website and blog owners had no easy mechanism to do this in the past, but we see it as another important feature for holistic social media reports. When you know what your most linked content is, it is then also much easier to replicate the success and ensure that you are building relationships with those users who actively link to you the most.”

You can find the backlink reports by this route:

• Social reportsà Click on specific URL (Pages)à Click on the Activity Stream tab (it is located above the graphs)à Land at new page with social data conversations related to this specific pageà Click on the Events tabà Find Backlinks information.
• To view each backlink URL you can click on ‘View Activity’ to visit the page with link, or Choose ‘View Page’ to see the page linked.

There is another way to find the centralized information in the reports. You can follow this path:

Social reportsà Click on specific URL (Pages)à Click on the Activity Stream tab (it is located above the graphs)à click on “ALL” (at the top of the page) to see all activity across all the pages in chronological order.

What do you think of this new backlink URL report? Will it keep you ahead of the Penguin now? Do share your views.

Post from: PageTraffic SEO Blog Now updated thrice a day!

Track Links with the Google Analytics New Backlink URL Report!

Webmaster's have been asking how to use the old version of Google Analytics all over the internet including at the Google Analytics Forum. This question was answered by Google Analytics in a Tweet, saying that the Google has moved the old version link to the old interface to the footer of the page.

Google really wants people to take to the new version, but it seems the majority is more comfortable with the familiar interface. What do you feel? Which version of the Google Analytics interface do you prefer?

Post from: PageTraffic SEO Blog Now updated thrice a day!

Old Version of Google Analytics Link Relocated to the Footer!

With a new "Customize" button in the action bar on all tabular standard reports, Google Analytics has allowed users to tweak standard reporting to a more customized approach. The Customize option will take Analytics users to a custom report builder that according to Google, can be used in certain cases as:

1. "New metrics, familiar reports – The best metrics are the ones that provide actionable insights into your business. Try adding different metric groups to your favorite reports to see if how it impacts your view of conversion rates.
2. Drill down into your data – Sometimes, the best route to a particular piece of data is a drilldown not found in any standard report. You could customize the Language report to drill into search terms for a language-by-language comparison of your organic search traffic.
3. Filter to find insights – Ad campaigns can span many networks. Try customizing the AdWords Campaigns report and applying a filter for Ad Distribution Network matches "Google Search" to see your performance on only Google Search." 

Google has also clarified that all standard reports cannot be turned into custom reports. In fact only the reports where you can spot the ‘Customize’ button can you turn the report. Google Analytics help center has more details on customizing a report.

Google Analytics has updated its list search engine list and from the 1st of this month, there have been new search engines added to the list. This search engines list is used by Google Analytics to auto-populate organic traffic. While you can add, search engines manually into the tracking code snippet, but this time Google Analytics has made these additions itself.

The search engines now part of the default list are:

• http://rakuten.co.jp
  
• http://biglobe.ne.jp
  
• http://goo.ne.jp
  
• http://www.startsiden.no/sok
  

Google has made another change which will probably lead to your search.com traffic showing a decline while traffic from other engines might pick up. This is because there has been a change made to the way Google Analytics recognizes search engines. Earlier, all the traffic was attributed to search.com; as any URL with the word “search” and a query parameter “q” was attributed by Google to search.com. This led to reports that were not correct (specially in reference to customized search engines).

But after February 1st, Google has changed its logic and the customized search engines will not be shown as search.com anymore.

Now these large customized search engines has been added to the default list of search engines with “search” in them. Here is the list:

• http://search.conduit.com
  
• http://search.babylon.com
  
• http://search-results.com
  
• http://isearch.avg.com
  
• http://search.comcast.net
  
• http://search.incredimail.com
  

To conclude, now those of you getting large amount of organic traffic, will see search.com organic traffic reducing while the other engines will start showing up as source. Please note that this will have no effect on your organic traffic from Bing or Google.

Post from: PageTraffic SEO Blog Now updated thrice a day!

Google Analytics Updates: GET Custom Organic SEO Reports!

As the first month of the New Year draws to a close, Google Analytics has updated and presented before webmasters a whole new version of Google Analytics. According to the Google newsletter, the Google Analytics team is focusing on features including email, scheduling, pdf export, profile copying and dashboard sharing.

New Content Navigation & Site Search Features

Now you can access your site search report for Goals, eCommerce and AdSense- Webmasters can connect searches on their sites with their KPIs through goals, eCommerce and AdSense revenue.

Improved usability with better Breadcrumbs

Google has introduced improvements in breadcrumbs, as they said, "To make navigation more intuitive and easier we've added the ability to change a dimension along the breadcrumb path. In addition to navigating back in one direction, you can now navigate sideways on all reports."

Pages Report now has the In-Page Analytics tab

Webmasters now do not need to navigate to the In-Page reports as they can directly launch In-Page on the selected page in focus. With better movement between the Pages, Navigation Summary, and In-Page tabs on the selected drill-down; it is really much more convenient for webmasters to gather insights now.

Better Mobile App Tracking Tools

Now developers can collect more reliable and accurate data post the enhancements made by Google Analytics. With accurate data, businesses can get more insight from their mobile app initiatives.

There is also a whole new forum for Webmasters to go to as well and an updated Google Analytics IQ course and exam. What do you think of these changes? Do share your views.

Post from: PageTraffic SEO Blog Now updated thrice a day!

Google Analytics Product Update – New Content Navigation & Site Search Features!

The definitions of average position in the search query report in Google Webmaster Tools and search optimization report in Google Analytics is being changed by Google. The change was revealed in the Google Webmaster Blog and Google Analytics Blog.

What’s the new definition?

As per the new definition, your search ranking will be determined by the average of the top ranking of the site for all searches, as opposed to all URLs listed and average that. Please note that only the top rankings will be taken. Earlier, the average search ranking was gathered by taking all the positions of your rankings and averaging them together.

This is how Google explains it-

“Let’s say Nick searched for [bacon] and URLs from your site appeared in positions 3, 6, and 12. Jane also searched for [bacon] and URLs from your site appeared in positions 5 and 9. Previously, we would have averaged all these positions together and shown an Average Position of 7. Going forward, we’ll only average the highest position your site appeared in for each search (3 for Nick’s search and 5 for Jane’s search), for an Average Position of 4.”

The impact of this on your Top Search Queries and Google Analytics Data

As per Google the historical data will not change, only the Top Search Queries Data going forward will be affected. Google said, “Note that the change in calculation means that the Average Position metric will usually stay the same or decrease, as we will no longer be averaging in lower-ranking URLs.”

Google is of the view that webmasters anticipations of how a link’s position in Google Search results should be reported will be matched better with this new method of calculation. 

Post from: PageTraffic SEO Blog Now updated thrice a day!

Average Search Rankings Redefined By Google!

Google Analytics users will see some more changes in the tool, as announced  by Google. The new changes include mobile ad performance metrics along with all AdWords reports having new visual toggle showing ads.

As Google is quoted, “Starting this week, some of you will see enhanced Analytics reports with mobile ad performance metrics. All AdWords reports in the new interface will be gaining a new visual toggle as shown below for “All”, “High-end Mobile” and “Tablet” ads.”

The new Google Analytics interface has these features, and will come in handy by letting webmasters sort out the increasing numbers of mobile and tablet users. These reports will be a huge help for businesses in understanding the requirements of mobile customers better.

Google plans to make further changes like email scheduling and PDF export functionality, as it announced recently. You will be able to see these changes in the new interface within a couple of weeks. Standard and custom reports will all have the email scheduling option:

Clicking on the “EMAIL” button pulls up the following email scheduling dialog:

Google said. “The old Google Analytics interface as well as all existing scheduled emails will be sunset starting in January 2012.“We believe that the new Google Analytics interface provides significant advantages over the old version, including access to Real Time Analytics, Multi-Channel Funnels, Social Plugin Analytics, & Flow Visualization. And hope you'll find enough value in these new features that you'll switch to the new version well before then.”

More changes are expected to be rolled out, and PageTraffic Buzz will let you know about them as soon as they arrive on the scene.

Post from: PageTraffic SEO Blog Now updated thrice a day!

Mobile Metrics, Email Scheduling & PDF Exporting Added To Google Analytics!

Google Analytics has officially announced an integration with social sharing services ShareThis and AddThis. This is an official announcement post the unveiling of Social Engagement Reports back in June this year. Now webmasters can get the social analytics sans the code implementation.

As Google Analytics says, “To enable the integration for all of your AddThis buttons, you are now just one line of code away, and ShareThis users don’t have to do a thing. If you have Google Analytics installed, and you are using a ShareThis widget, simply login into Google Analytics and check out your new social reports!”

So now with a simple code, webmasters can collect content interaction metrics from sharing tools like Google+, Facebook, Twitter and others. This integration allows for the integration of the other sharing tools except Google+ (which is tracked automatically).

The Flip Side:

With the ability to get the social analytics without getting into code implementation web masters may feel elated, but certain issues pertaining to the integration are still present. One such issue is that one cannot filter social tracking. This means webmasters running tow sites from the same account will not be able to use filters to separate the social data. This will interfere with the management of PPC accounts too as even with the filter on to include only CPC data, all the social data will be available to them.

Another concern is that while ‘AddThis’ gets a +1, as it offers a choice to add the social method if their customers want to, ‘ShareThis’ tracking is automatic. This means that if a webmaster has an Analytics user unable to see social data in their account, ‘ShareThis’ would come off as inappropriate.

Will this social integration of Analytics work? Do share your views.

Post from: PageTraffic SEO Blog Now updated thrice a day!

It’s Official! Share This and Add This Now Integrated With Google Analytics!

Google conducts an ongoing study of web browser behavior. In this study, millions of websites across the world participated, and some interesting results have come out. An infographic on the same has been created by KISSmetrics.

The results have insights like global bounce rates and average time-on-site metrics are on the decline. The study shows Macintosh as the leader in operating systems, while the Windows market share is dropping. Study the infographic for further insights, and leave your comments on the same!

Post from: PageTraffic SEO Blog Now updated thrice a day!

Web Analytics Review – 2011!

The search industry in an uproar after Google's announcement that they will now encrypt searches and outbound links by default, for signed in users. With the SSL in place, the SEOs and webmasters will not get the valuable search query string via the referrer. The fact that this data will be available to AdWords advertisers, has really angered the search community. The assurance by Google that only 10 percent of searchers will be impacted by this, but the data still remains significant

The Impact On SEOs And Webmasters- Without Referral Data, SEOs Are Blind!

The search industry is wounded deeply by this. Optimization will be hit directly as SEOs evaluate the keywords that work for them from the organic keyword data only. This leads them to design landing pages and other methods to improve the user experience as well as the site's performance. There will be no way to ensure that the traffic gets converted.

Also, at the moment, experts are trying to work their way around this but to no avail. Now an SEO has to give more emphasis on ranking rather than conversion. With no idea about the keywords dictating the users' movement on the site, an internet marketer will be clueless as to how to personalize content based on the keyword or search phrase. Even if this personalization is termed as cloaking by Google, SEOs make this effort to provide users with exactly what they come looking for on the site.

Google has been often quoted as saying- "Focus on the user and all else will follow". However, with the referral data blocked from SEOs then, a webmaster cannot focus on his users at all!

“Google's Double Standards?”

The SEO Community has been venting its feelings about Google's latest move. They have scoffed Google's reasoning of protecting users' privacy, and claim that the real reason Google is hiding keyword data from organic search is to crush third party ad networks and retargeting companies.

Also, the fact that referral data is available to advertisers, but not to organic searches. This has been interpreted as Google's veiled message, that one needs to pay the search engine to get to know the keywords that are getting the traffic.

'Privacy' Is Just A Veil'

Search professional have denied Google's intention of protecting users' privacy by introducing encrypted search. They have called is half baked privacy with users saving their data in the case of organic searches, but not in the case of advertisers. Users may not look at Google all dewy eyed. They will understand that their privacy is important to protect in certain cases, but not enough when it comes to advertisers.

Google wants to prevent users from revealing private information in referrer data through clicks on its organic search results. But the privacy is lost to advertisers in any case. So what's the point? Also, the SEOs have pointed out the previous cases where Google has been called in for invading privacy like e-mail ads and Street View.

'Privacy Could Have Been Preserved In Other Ways'

In the answer to Google's claim to be following suit with Twitter, Facebook, so that it maintains its commitment to the Electronic Frontier Foundation's initiative called HTTPS Everywhere, the SEO fraternity has dissected the HTTPS case too. Further studies were conducted to ensure user privacy through Google’s search results at the Electronic Frontier Foundation. The recommendations offered Google many ways to save its users from session hijacking. These included:

• Google could discontinue the personalized search service
• Put the ball in users' court and let them choose to use HTTPS for conducting searches.
• It could also categorize and store histories based on the different networks from which user’s searches originate.
• It could then give suggestions based on various locations.
• It could also let the user agents to bind the authentication cookies to the current IP address.

In other words, for the sake of saving privacy and preventing the users sessions being hijacked, Google could have implemented many other ways. Blocking referral data was not the only choice.

'So Why Is Google Doing This'

The real reason, as per the search community, is that Google is doing this to shut out competing ad networks. Now, that the data has been removed from the referring query string, the third party ad networks cannot measure their traffic quality. Also, the webmasters will be in the dark about the ranking ranking results, Adwords data. Another issue is that without the search query data, webmasters will be unable to verify the Google Adwords search counts.

The search fraternity is not at all convinced with the privacy argument and are calling it a cover up for the real plan of killing the competition- third party applications, other analytics providers, search retargeting services and the sites like Bing that use data for relevance.

Now the organic search marketers have no way of working on the landing page targeting. As they do not have any access to the search terms. But the fact that advertisers can do that seems grossly unfair to them.

'Even The 10% Users' Data Matters'

When Google’s Matt Cutts, said that this change will only impact referral data in single digits or up to 10%, webmasters argue that this figure cannot be generalized.

Matt Cutts also Tweeted about it-

Despite what Matt says, the “not provided” keyword data could form up to 30% for many webmasters. This assumption has also been categorized as unfair.

SEO Community In An Uproar- Google Is Evil Now?

Google is claiming that they have done this to ensure the users' privacy. But the fact that those using Google Ads get the referrer data points to a totally different reason- to get the keywords, paying to Google is mandatory now? The rule of security varies for advertisers brings this move by Google under suspicion. While on one hand Google claims to be highly concerned about user privacy over personalized search, where as on the other hand, AdWords advertisers can “buy” this private data

This has got the SEO community crying foul. The views of those prominent in the search industry are given below:

Joost de Walk- “This is what I call hypocrisy at work. Google cares about your privacy, unless they make money on you, then they don’t. The fact is that due to this change, AdWords gets favored over organic results. Once again, Google gets to claim that it cares about your privacy and pulls a major public “stunt”. The issue is, they don’t care about your privacy enough to not give that data to their advertisers. ”

Peter Young- “To be honest the fact that its perfectly acceptable for PPC data to be tracked in the same circumstance that Google says it cannot pass organic data through for “privacy purposes” would suggest again this privacy is the least of their concerns. “You can have the data – as long as you pay us” would appear to be the rhetoric here. ”

Patrick Alcroft- “To me this seems like a move designed both to make Google appear to be protecting users as well as an opportunity for them to take away data that helps big sites build more effective SEO campaigns. ”

Aaron Bradley- “I’m a little perplexed that Google has cited privacy concerns with this move. Unless I’m missing something, there’s no way for a Google Analytics user to trace back a referrer to a specific individual whether they’re logged into Google or not. Even with log analysis you’re only going to get an IP, and you’d have to associate that with a user, somehow (and here a logged in Google user would be no different than an anonymous surfer) ”

Tony Verre- “Moreover, those who used analytics just to surmise if people/consumers and how people/consumers found them for something other than BRAND terms, just got a punch in the face [read Mom and Pop shops who can't afford online marketing services and help]. The web might be a key component to survival for them, and taking away accurate data in the name of faux-privacy is a pretty big deal. ”

These reactions are only a few from the industry. The forums all across the internet are rife with these discussions.

My View- As an SEO professional, I am deeply disappointed by Google's move. This will put the movement of industry from 'ranking' to 'return on investment' on the back gear. Most search professionals use Google Analytics to report their clients about the traffic and visitor behavior on their sites. With the referral data held back by Google, there is no way of tracking conversions for organic traffic. This will make it very difficult for an internet marketer to justify the returns for the client. However, I am not hopeful for a roll back of this move from Google.

What do you think? Will Google roll back this move? Are search referrers dying? Do leave your comments.

Post from: PageTraffic SEO Blog Now updated thrice a day!

Google's Move To Encrypted Search- SEOs Cry Foul- Accuse Google Of Double Standards!

At the Web 2.0 Summit, Google Analytics announced new flow visualization reports. These reports will come in handy to make website owners to get a better idea about the user behavior on their site. These reports will address an old issue of analyzing paths throughout a website in a scalable way.

The two new reports are:

1. Visitors Flow
This report can be found in the Visitors section of the Standard Reporting tab. This report will give webmasters a graphical representation of visitors’ flow through the site by traffic source. As a webmaster you will get to know where the visitors went, and at what point did they leave the site. You will also gather the relative volume of visits to your site as well as the volume of views per page.

How The Visitors Flow Report Works

Now, when you want to get a Visitors Flow Report, you have to select a dimension for the first column of the report- as in one of the “nodes”. A node can be a keyword, or a campaign or any other source of reference. For detailed data analysis, you can select multiple dimensions.

As Google says, “You’ll also notice that we made the visualization highly interactive. You can interact with the graph to highlight different pathways, and to see information about specific nodes and connections. For example, if you want to dive deeper into your “specials” set of pages, you can hover over the node to see more at a glance.”

The visitor report will give marketers an instant insight into which page are the visitors flocking too. If there is a new offer going on and people are coming on to the offer page, then the marketer gets an idea about what to do about the page. You can also-

• See where did the visitors coming specifically from Google do on your site.
• Get to know the data on all the visits that lead to a node.
• Follow the visitors' path forwards or backwards to know the exact engagement of the visitors with your promotion.

2. Goal Flow
This report can be found under the the Goals subsection of Conversions, also under the Standard Reporting tab. The report provides an insight into the visitors' behavior with regards to your goal- what all did they do, and where they lost interest. It is up to you, as webmaster, to define the goal steps as per the important steps and page groups of interest to the site. At the moment, Google Analytics is offering URL goal flow reports, but soon other goal types like events will be added.

How The Goal Report Works

The goal report helps you gather and understand the relative volume of visits to your site by the traffic source you choose. You can also know how and at what rate do the visitors abandon different pathways. Also, a goal report will give you an insight about the way visitors navigate through your goal steps. Basically how the users took to your site and interacted with it.

As Google says, “In addition, for those who want to see how visitors arrive at a page (or pages) of interest, they can select that page (or pages) and visualize “backward”. Such “reverse paths” could help site owners identify suboptimal placement of content. Similarly, “forward” paths from a page (or pages) can be visualized to understand most visited pages or to see visitor flow leakages that a site owner might be unaware of. Pages before and after the node of interest are automatically grouped based on the most common “visitor” flows, and we’re building continued improvements to help group together sensible visitor paths and page nodes.”

Google also said that you can create a new goal and check it backwards on your historical data.

To Conclude:
These reports will come in handy for all webmasters, as they can know what the users search for, and then react to the search results. For instance in the case of an ecommerce site, they will now know how shoppers go to search, then product and cart pages. Knowing this can aid in modifying the site navigation structure too. What do you think? How will these reports make a difference to your work. Do leave your comments behind.

For more on the latest changes in Google Analytics, see this.

Post from: PageTraffic SEO Blog Now updated thrice a day!

Google Analytics Now Supports Flow Visualization Reports!

SEOs the world over are crying foul over Google's new move towards secure search. The search engine announced this in the blog post that changed it all. Now, Google has changed the way secure search works for users that are signed in its services. This means that if a signed in to Google user does a search, it will be on a secure socket layer (SSL) and the search term referrer data will not be passed on. But, if you are using Google PPC, then you will get the keyword data for the searches made.

What Is The New 'Secure Search'?

Google says that in order to make search a customized experience, it is essential to protect personalized search results. That is why the users signed in to Google will have their search queries encrypted.

As Google says, “Over the next few weeks, many of you will find yourselves redirected to https://www.google.com (note the extra “s”) when you’re signed in to your Google Account. This change encrypts your search queries and Google’s results page. This is especially important when you’re using an unsecured Internet connection, such as a WiFi hotspot in an Internet cafe. You can also navigate to https://www.google.com directly if you’re signed out or if you don’t have a Google Account.”

With the secure site search, the websites that get the clicks from the users will not know the search terms they were clicked for. This leaves the search experts and webmasters in the dark as they will not know the keywords that are working for them. They will lose valuable data that helps them understand what people come looking for on their site. They will just know that someone came!

Why Is Google Doing This?

Google says that it is following suit with Twitter, Facebook and doing its bit towards the Electronic Frontier Foundation's initiative called HTTPS Everywhere.

Again, signed in users need to protect their privacy from organic webmasters, but not from advertisers? The search fraternity is questioning Google's lopsided view on “privacy”.

What About Google Analytics?

Well, if you were thinking of signing up for the paid Google Analytics, then think again, as it too is blocked from this encryption. You will just know whether the visit was from a paid or organic result, but what was the search term, you won't get to know.

As it says in the official Analytics blog “When a signed in user visits your site from an organic Google search, all web analytics services, including Google Analytics, will continue to recognize the visit as Google “organic” search, but will no longer report the query terms that the user searched on to reach your site. Keep in mind that the change will affect only a minority of your traffic. You will continue to see aggregate query data with no change, including visits from users who aren’t signed in and visits from Google “cpc”.”

Google further said that they have marked the signed in users organic search visits with the token “(not provided)” within Organic Search Traffic Keyword reporting. The referrals will be there, but the search queries entered will be missing. However, secure site searches that lead to clicks via search ads, will still provide the search.

Where Will The Keywords Be Available?

Google has assured that the search queries can be found at the Google Webmaster Central. So, some solace here for the SEOs as they can get the top 1,000 queries that a site appeared for at Google and was clicked for. This data is available for a 30 day period. The Official blog takes an understanding approach towards the SEOs problem of the highly valuable data being taken away from them, but puts forward its service and data. Webmasters and search experts have the only hope that the 30 day data period be extended to an indefinite period, so that they can analyze their site better. The fact that the Google Webmaster Central data has been integrated in to Google Analytics provides some comfort to the SEOs.

All OK For Google Ads And PPC Though

If you are an advertiser with Google, don't sweat, you will know the search query that led the searcher to your site. Things will be just the same, as it is with unencrypted search. This is because advertisers have the right to know what people are looking for, to better their campaigns.

As Google wrote in its post, “Your browser will continue to send the relevant query over the network to enable advertisers to measure the effectiveness of their campaigns and to improve the ads and offers they present to you.”

There is a question here, when advertisers get this data from the AdWords system, why are they not blocked in Analytics too? Also don't the users need privacy from advertisers? This is one question that is being speculated everywhere.

The Silver Lining For SEOs

Google's Matt Cutts has been quoted as saying that this change will impact less than 10 percent of searchers. Now as an SEO you can see it as 10% lost or 90% saved. But yes, the keyword referral data is lost to you. But there are ways out- shift to other analytics, and get the keyword data. Good news for Bing maybe?

What do you think of Google's SSL move? Is it a balanced move or there is more into it than looks?

Post from: PageTraffic SEO Blog Now updated thrice a day!

Google Encrypts Signed-in Search Data – No More Referral Data For SEOs!

Good News For Webmasters! The Search Engine Optimization reports in Google Analytics based on Webmaster Tools data, that were promised by Google in June, are available now. These reports are a Google Webmaster Tools integration with Google Analytics, and let you see the search query data from Webmaster Tools directly in Google Analytics. And now, Google has announced that this feature is now accessible for all.

Google said that "the reports have undergone major changes, post the feedback they got during the pilot period, and now are available with several improvements. One can see them in the Traffic Sources section of Google Analytics."

This is what these reports will tell you-

• Queries: impressions, clicks, position, and CTR info for the top 1,000 daily queries
• Landing Pages: impressions, clicks, position, and CTR info for the top 1,000 daily landing pages
• Geographical Summary: impressions, clicks, and CTR by country

According to Google, “All of these Search Engine Optimization reports offer Google Analytics’ advanced filtering and visualization capabilities for deeper data analysis. With the secondary dimensions, you can view your site’s data in ways that aren’t available in Webmaster Tools.”

The thing to note here is that only those webmasters, who are both a Webmaster Tools verified site owner and a Google Analytics administrator of the website can get these reports. Try out these reports on your site, and do let us know? Are they helpful?

For more see- How To Set Up Webmaster Tools and know the latest additions in Analytics.

Post from: PageTraffic SEO Blog Now updated thrice a day!

Google Webmaster Tool And Google Analytics Integration SEO Reports Now Available!

To begin with, Google Analytics will have a new look next week. Secondly, it will have a new set of reports called "Real Time." This was just announced by Google and the reports will be under the 'Dashboard' tab and will show you what’s happening on your site as it happens!

What Will The Real Time Reports Show?

According to Google, the Analytics Real Time will tell you-

• Number of Visits per minute
• Number of active visitors on the site per minute
• The Location of visitors
• Sources sending the traffic
• The Keywords that brought the visitors

The real time reports will have a lot to tell big websites or even blogs, as they see a lot of activity.

How Will The Real Time Reports Help You?

You can use these real time reports to-

• Measure social media impact: You can get an immediate insight into how your social media campaign is going. As Google said, “Whenever we put out a new blog post, we also send out a tweet. With Real-Time, I can see the immediate impact to my site traffic. For example, last week we posted about the latest episode of Web Analytics TV and also tweeted about the post. By campaign tagging the links we shared, we could see how much traffic each channel is driving to the blog as it happened. We could also see when we stopped receiving visits from the tweet, which helps know when to reengage.”
• Ad Campaign measurement: You can also use Real-Time to ensure that the campaign tracking is implemented in the right manner, just prior to launching a campaign. Real-Time reports tell you within minutes if the data you are getting in Google Analytics is actually what you want. This will let you verify the effectiveness of the ad, while rolling out your campaign.

These Real-Time reports are available in the new Analytics and are in the Dashboards tab. The Dashboard will soon be moved to the Home tab (remember the new interface being launched next week?). Google has also made it clear that Real-Time does not support profile filters.

When Will Real Time Be Out And Pick Up Speed:

According to Google, it is a one to two weeks wait before the complete roll out of Real Time reports. For those who want to sign up now can do it here.

Post from: PageTraffic SEO Blog Now updated thrice a day!

Now Get Real Time Reports With Google Analytics!

In an attempt to provide webmaster with more insights and support, Google launched a paid version of Google Analytics- Google Analytics Premium. For a flat rate annual fee, the new analytics will process higher volumes of page views and also will provide additional support.

What Is New In Google Analytics Premium:

In Google Analytics Premium, the features and the user experience are the same as in general Google Analytics. It has more capabilities, than that of the regular analytics. And it will benefit the organizations that want dedicated services and support. Also the sites who desire to process data more frequently (without sampling too!) As the Premium package says for itself- “Now you can share more valuable information than ever throughout your enterprise – from the back room to the boardroom-for better decision making.”

The main categories of the services of the Premium Analytics are:

Also Google guarantees that the contract ensures that the data is owned by them.

• Extra processing power- Google Analytics Premium will allow you to gather, analyze and share more data. You can track more that a billion hits per month. With the availability of 50 custom variables, you get deeper insights. You can also download unsampled reports and can analyze all of it at your leisure.
• Advanced analysis- The Analytics Premium has advanced analysis tools to deliver deeper insights into understanding consumer behavior. The attribution modeling tools let you test different models for assigning credit to conversions. With the many custom variables, one can customize the analytics as they want and this will allow them to collect unique site usage data.
• Guarantees- There is a service level agreement that comes with Google uptime guarantee. Here is what Google has agreed to provide, in regards to data collection, reporting, and processing-
  1. 1. 99.9% on Data Collection up-time
  2. 99% on Reporting up-time
  3. 98% on on-time Data Processing- with the freshness being the main focus(within 4 hours)
• Service and support- You will have experts to guide customized installation, and what's more, Google will provide dedicated account management and you can call them 24×7, any time of the day. Google aims to make the webmasters understand the entire analytics easily, so that they can support themselves. For the same, they will give Live and Webinar training. Apart from the 24×7 emergency hotline, there is the regualr phone & email support 10 hours per day, 5 days per week

How Much Do You Have To Pay For It?

As of now, the Google Analytics Premium is available to US, UK and Canada based companies. Their sites may be located globally. The search engine giant hopes to expand soon. The prices are:

• USA- $150,000 USD
• Canada- $150,000 CAN
• UK- GBP 90,000

This amount is a flat rate yearly payment, that will be billed monthly from the clients. As Google says, “Google Analytics Premium was developed in close coordination with some of our largest clients. During our pilot phase, we’ve been working with Gucci, Travelocity, TransUnion, eHarmony and others, to make sure Google Analytics Premium meets their needs. We’re very happy with what we’ve built and we’re now ready to make it available to all interested clients.”

What Changes In User Interface Have Been Brought In:

Well, essentially, Google Analytics Premium's interface is the same as that of the regular analytics, but there are a few small changes:

• You can get an unsampled report- Click on the “Download” button on a report and there is a new option to get an “Unsampled Download”
• Customized Reports- Now with the close to 50 or so custom variables available in the Custom Report builder, the reports can be highly customized.

Here is a detailed video about Google Analytics Premium:

Do You Need To Use Google Analytics Premium?

The amount to pay is a big one, and you have to think before taking the leap. But if you have any of the concerns listed below, then shift to Premium at the earliest-

If you are already paying for an analytic tool. In this case, you are paying on the basis of pageviews. But in the case of Google Analytics, pricing is not based on pageviews or hits or visits. Also, you have the option to switch to the regular and free version anytime, without losing your data or needing to switch tags.

If you need to get your hands on unsampled data. Also, with the premium version you will be able to collect and process all your data. Not only will the reports load faster, you will have higher data limits data will be fresher, even at larger volumes.

Also, if you want to do further segmentation, then you can do so with the 50 or so custom variables. A good option for complex websites.
 
What About The Free/Regular Analytics ?

This is a major concern plaguing many webmasters-who have decided that they can't afford the premium package. Will Google stop working on making the free version of Analytics better? These concerns have been addressed by Google in this manner- “We are more committed than ever to our standard version. With the release of Google Analytics v5 we are poised to release features faster than ever and are confident that measurement can keep up with the digital consumer journey at last. In the last 3 months alone we’ve released many great features to the new version of Google Analytics.”

So, take a relaxing breath, the regular analytics will work just fine. And if you want more, then sign up for the premium version.

A Word Of Advise:

Google Analytics Premium is for businesses that take e-commerce and online marketing very seriously. The best part about Google Analytics Premium, and what works for it put in a single line- The unsampled reports and the service level agreements, make it a good deal for webmasters. And they do stand to gain more form the Premium version of Analytics.

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Google Launches Google Analytics Premium!

The microblogging site has launched Twitter Web Analytics, a tool that will allow publishers/owners of these websites to track the traffic they are receiving from Twitter. The service is powered by BackType, i.e. the social analytics company that Twitter acquired two months back.

A number of website owners now seek to tap the popularity and reach of Twitter for content distribution. And certainly they will like to have an idea about how much the strategy is paying off. So now they have Twitter Web Analytics for that.

So precisely how will the tool help publishers/owners to track the results that their sites are getting through Twitter integration? Well, it will do the same by offering them the following three data –

a.) How much of their website content is being shared on the microblogging site.

b.) The volume of traffic that Twitter is sending to their websites.

c.) The level of performance delivered by Tweet Buttons.

No doubt that this tool will be really helpful in understanding the effectiveness of Twitter in boosting the outreach potential of one's website.

Twitter Web Analytics will be first launched this week for a select group of partners, and will be made accessible for website owners within a couple of weeks. Twitter management is also contemplating the launch of a Twitter Web Analytics API for those developers who are interested to integrate their products with Twitter data.

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Twitter Web Analytics – Tracking The Traffic To Your Website From Twitter!

With the ever increasing Google +'s membership figures wouldn't it be great to be able to track the referrals in Google+ using Google Analytics? This could enable you to get a clear picture of the source of the traffic to you.

As successfully demonstrated by Andrew Shotland, he “adapted (aka “ripped off”) this great post from Sebastien Page” who in turn gives “full credit” to Ruben Yau.

Following are the steps adapted:
“Go to your Google Analytics account and click on Filter Manager > Add Filter, and enter the following information:

1) Filter Name: Full Referrer (or whatever you want to call it)
Filter Type: Custom Filter
Advanced
Field A -> Extract A: Referral (.*)
Field B -> Extract B: leave blank
Output To -> Constructor: User Defined $A1
Field A Required: Yes
Field B Required: No
Override Output Field: Yes
Case Sensitive: No

It should look like this:”

2) Now, when you go on the dashboard, in the left-hand navigation, click on the 'Visitors'. By doing so, you will see the “User Defined” option. It is this report which tracks the URL's full referring.

NB: Please do not panic if the report shows up with nothing at first. Allow Google to take sometime before it starts populating your data.

3) Now, click the “advanced” filter option which sits right next to the report search box.

It is further suggested:

4) “Create two “Dimension” filters including “google” and “url?sa”. “url?sa” is the identifying element of Google Plus referring URLs.”

5) And last but certainly not the least, on clicking the 'Apply' button, you will have the full URL.

So, there you have it! If you didn't already know about it, start seeing the full referral URLs be it for your Google + page or any other, get hacking and tracking!

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Track Google Plus Referrals in Google Analytics!

Google Analytics can go a long way in helping you achieve your conversion goals. With the smarter Analytics, you can create your own metrics and reports, which will fulfill your specific requirements.

Listed below are a few tricks and tips to help you get more out of Google Analytics.

The standards of SEO have changed drastically. Getting high ranking is just not enough now. Getting hordes of traffic is not enough. What you need is conversion. The number of people visiting your site should change to leads or sales. Google Analytics can help you in analysing the traffic trends on your website, and direct you in making the right changes in your SEO techniques.

Creating Filters:
With filters, you can weed out the data you don't want in your reports. For multiple filters, you can create multiple profiles to track different filtered data. However, have one master profile that has all your data. You must create filters within your Profile Settings page. Here is more on creating multiple profiles. Andre Scholten of Yoast.com also stresses that in order to get the right ranking in Google Analytics report, a new filter is needed. He says, “Well, you can't specifically track the exact position of the keyword that was clicked like you can do with AdWords. But it is possible to determine the page he was on. A ranking tool can tell you over and over again that a certain keyword is around position 15 in Google while Google Analytics claims he is on page 1 (position 1 to 10). This effect can come from 'personalized search' or 'local results' that can influence the Google rankings dramatically. ” See his tutorial on how to use and understand the filtered data here.

Advanced Segments:
Advanced Segmentation is a tool with which you can filter the Analytics data in a report,  without having to create separate profiles. You can then keep track of different groups and traffic sources and also analyse their behaviour. These segments can be created from the control bar at the top of any report, or the Advanced Segmentation section underneath the list of your reports. To set them up, click on “Advanced Segments”, click “Create new custom segment” and then you can add your dimensions and metrics. You can segment organic visits including your brand name, or visits that are made after words like – 'help' or 'ways' or 'buy'. You can go in depth, analyse for instance the referral traffic that you are getting and their conversions. Here is a very helpful blog on Advanced Segmentation. 

Custom Reports:
It is of prime importance to customise your Analytics. You should know what works for you. Now, you may be happy by knowing general stuff about number of visits, from where, bounce rate etc. But how does all this relate to the most important word- conversions? This you can gather from ordering a customised report. On the dashboard- Follow these steps:

Custom Reporting–>Manage Custom Reports–> Create new custom report–>

At this stage, you can drag and drop your metrics and dimensions. You can always, save the report and modify the metrics to see further insights. 

Creating Goals:
Setting up goals is the best way to achieve conversion. Google Analytics helps you evaluate how well your site is moving towards the goal in your mind. A goal varies for every site- and so does the funnel. This is the process of setting up a goal:

Overview section–>Edit–>Add Goal ( in the Goals section).

Now you can set the sales as a goal for an e-commerce site and time spent on a page for a publishing site as your goal.

After that Name the Goal–> define URL Destination as the Goal Type–> For Goal Details select Head Match for match type, and /feeds as the Goal URL

Here is the detailed process of setting up and analysing goals.

Google Analytics looks simple but has has many layers and provides data that you can filter-segment and then customise it to set better goals that lead to conversion. Being an SEO, reviewing these customised reports will help you work better on your site and convert every visit into something profitable. The conclusion is simple- Get more out of Google Analytics

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Google Analytics And SEO!

Google has announced the inclusion of a new feature – the Site Speed Report, in the latest Google Analytics. This feature will allow you to measure the page load time on pages of your website. According to the company, Google Analytics users can now understand how load times impact their ranking at Google, user experience and eventually the conversion rates.

Google says, “To improve the performance of your pages, you first need to measure and diagnose the speed of a page, which can be a difficult task. Furthermore, even with page speed measurements, it’s critical to look at page speed in context of other web analytics data.”

The company cites four different functions Google Analytics users can perform using the Site Speed Report. Users can apply the Site Speed Report to:

• Content: To find out which landing pages are slowest?
• Traffic sources: Measure which campaigns correspond to faster page loads overall?
• Visitor: How does page load time differ, with visitor to visitor or from place to place?
• Technology: Does the site load time differ from browser to browser or one OS to another?

Once the cause of the issue is diagnosed, users can take perform the necessary improvements or changes to speed up the loading of those pages that has been taking more time to load.
 
How to set up and use the Site Speed Report?

The Site Speed Report feature comes turned-off by default, denoting only 0s in the report. To start using the feature and measure your website's load speed, you need to turn it on and make a little change to the Analytics tracking code. The required tracking code changes are explained on the Site Speed page at the Analytics Help Center. When this tracking code change is made, the Site Speed Report feature will automatically use a small sample of pageviews to measure the page load time. If the site speed set up procedure is done correctly, users will be able to see report data in a few hours.

It seems that the Google Analytics team and the Make the Web Faster team are working really hard to speed the web up and provide a better search experience.

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Google Releases Site Speed Report – A New Feature In Analytics!

Google has released the Google Analytics V5, the newest Google Analytics to all users (of all languages). Users can find a 'New Version' link on the top right of their account page when they sign in. The new version has some notable changes made to it such as the redesigned interface, event goals, multiple customizable dashboards, more powerful custom reports and the search term cloud visualization among others. Accessing both versions of Google Analytics (the old and the V5), and switching between them is possible.

The graphical and faster interface and the multiple dashboards features of the new version seem to be impressing site owners who have expressed their delight. It allows users to create a dashboard for each person or group involved with a site. A maximum number of 20 custom dashboards with up to 12 widgets for each dashboard can be created with the latest version. Another feature in the new version worth mention is the event-based goals that informs the user when a PDF white paper is downloaded. The user can also give different values to white papers on the basis of the business value of each download.

So far, the new Google Analytics have generated both positive and negative buzz from various users. While some find the new additions and improvements helpful, there are others that points out certain snags, comparing the V5 to its older form. Rachael Gerson from Seer Interactive, although she has another list of likes, lists 15 reasons why the new Analytics version disappoints. She rates each on the level of its severity using Critical, Important, Annoying and Minor Issue to denote the criticality of each.

Rachael's list of issues regarding the new Analytics includes Report Export (Critical), Schedule & Email Reports (Critical), Date-Over-Date Comparison (Critical), Goal Sets No Longer Show Visit Numbers (Important), Graphing by Week (Annoying), Settings & Navigation (Annoying), View Overall Conversion Rate (Annoying), In Page Analytics (Minor Issue) and so on.

Google is reported to have promptly fixed some of the issues being pointed out by various users. Seems like the Google Analytics Team is working hard on making it better, and is apparently making progress too. Let's hope that all the issues gets fixed while it is still in beta version. Meanwhile, users can join the Google forum for the new Analytics beta and raise queries or discuss or follow Google Analytics on Twitter for any new update.

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New Version of Google Analytics Now Available For Everyone!