Dear keyword reports from Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools… why can’t you speak with one voice?

As practitioners in the web analytics field, we search for convergence among sources of data. When only one perspective or tool suggests insight into our users behavior we should be hesitant to jump to conclusions. As a best practice, we search for patterns among two or more sources, to increase confidence for a specific observation. Unfortunately different reporting mechanisms will often contradict each other, even in the case of the analytics superstar Google.

Here is an example that was recently brought to my attention. I lean heavily on Google Analytics to see what keywords bring traffic to the Iteration Station. Google webmaster Tools also offers a “Google only” referral report. When Google recently rolled out a data sharing component I hoped that the Google cloud would tighten up and I would see convergence among my reports. (more…)

Gain An Eye on the Competition with Google Benchmarking

Have you ever wondered how your site was doing in comparison to other industry players? Well, now Google Analytics offers a glimpse into the KPI’s of your industry. Earlier this month Google allowed users to opt-in to a new data sharing program through their analytics account. The service was turned on sometime last week and data started appearing.

If you’d like to jump on the boat, go to you Google Analytics homepage and click the data sharing link:

(more…)

Today the Google Analytics blog announced the release of it’s Urchin software beta to the public. Urchin offers a three month trial free of charge to evaluate this installable analytics product hosted on your own server. Google cautions users against using the trial with production on sites. They do state that once Urchin is brought out of beta, it can be purchased for 2995$ from a Google Authorized consultant.

Take a gander at the new flash supported interface:

(more…)

I may be a little late to the party on this one but I just stumbled upon a new feature in Google Analytics that I’ve been praying for for quite some time.

GA now offers its humble users the ability to compare two metrics at the same time. Essentially it’s an overlay line graph like the one below:

(more…)

This post is all about separating traffic on a membership site. Typically, membership sites will have public facing pages that anyone can view and private pages that require membership permissions.

In order to understand activity on public vs. private pages concerning such metrics as unique visitors, browser capability and organic referrals, we need generate reports on one group at a time.

You can accomplish this in Google Analytics by setting up custom filters that segment reporting to a defined set of pages.

(more…)