One of the minor annoyances with the introduction with Bing is that all the tools currently used has to be updated (assuming of course you care about MSN/Live/Bing for your work). The sad reality of all this is that Google Analytics has yet to update its system to include Bing as a standard search engine–even Omniture has done this!

Maybe it’s Google just thinking “eh, with all the mistakes on it currently, they’ll just rename it again anyway?”

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With any program there will be quirks that one has to learn either through trial and error or just common usage and Google Analytics has some of these aspect as well.

• Visits / Entrances: Visits are mostly used within the Traffic Sources section whereas Entrances are used within the Content section. The quirk about these two metrics is that they capture the same kind of data–essentially a session entry into the site. Therefore, if you check the number of entrances in the Top Landing Pages in Top Content and then go to Traffic Sources and segment by Landing Pages, the numbers between Visits and Entrances are the same.
• IP Addresses: One can include or exclude IP addresses (say for the purpose of excluding or including internal traffic), but if you want to find out what IP addresses you may want to segment, this cannot be done within any profile. Not sure if it is possible even with GA’s API.
• Page Titles: Google Analytics can pull page titles as a way to view duplicate page titles, but you cannot view your Meta Descriptions for the same purpose as well.
• Ad Slot Position: PPC can see whether the PPC ad is displayed on the top or on the right hand side, and yet, cannot actually optimize the ads to be placed in those specific positions. Oh, and of course, no ability for SEO to see their keyword positions

Any other quirks noticed?

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Quick note that if you want to learn a quick way to use advanced segments within Google Analytics for eCommerce, I strongly suggest heading over to the Google Analytics Blog.

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Google, knowing that digital TV will become mandatory within the US removing the ability to use all analog TVs without converters, has introduced a digital video recorder that can report for Google TV ads into Google AdWords.

Through a partnership with Dish Networks, the tool monitors time-shifted data from DVRs to give advertisers insight into how and when viewers see ads during the playback of recorded content. About 25% of television households in the U.S. have digital video recorders or DVRs installed, according to the Mountain View, Calif., company.

Google said it processes DVR viewership data from millions of set-top boxes to provide accurate, detailed time-shifted impression counts. There are several ways to view the number of impressions, from same day to seven days. As with all metrics in Google TV Ads reports, time-shifted impressions reflect the viewership of your specific TV commercial, not just general program viewership. The data is available to Google Adwords TV advertisers for free.

This, of course, leads to it being used within Google Analytics to provide additional information on the ads’ ROIs for free as well.

Would this be television’s savior as companies shift budgeting dollars to the Internet that has the ability to track at a deeper level? Maybe, but the problem still occurs that there is no direct correlation to one watching the advertisement and actually seeing the ad beyond the use of vanity URLs that could potentially come through other marketing channels.

That said, computers and TVs are slowly (in a technological advancement aspect) merging into one whole unit that will likely make the DVR specific device obsolete in ten to twenty years once devices such as HP’s Media Center become the norm and TVs becoming just tertiary (not secondary because one has to have two computer monitors) monitors that connect wireless to a household mainframe computer.

Unsure about how that would work? Look at how Youtube is becoming interactive now and the huge jump in tracking that will provide in the future for television (or online video content) with a simple mouse click away.

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Custom reports for Google Analytics, though second best in my opinion to the advanced segmentation filters in the latest update, provides some rather helpful and great uses for the rabid Google Analytics user. The Google Analytics blog provides some tips about what to use the custom reports for:

• Combining metrics from multiple reports
• Creating relevant drilldowns
• Simplifying reports to share with colleagues

With any new feature (or really with any features) there are going to be limitations so keep in mind how to combine metrics and dimensions. I have run across some of the limitations below:

• You unfortunately cannot directly create a Landing Pages & Visits custom report–Entrances (which is really the same thing), yes. But otherwise, you either have to drilldown by landing page in the traffic sources section (which, honestly, I have some qualms about) or within the custom report put in the other values you want, create the report, and then do the drilldown.
• Just about anything with AdWords data–sadly, the data within Analytics (when its linked) comes from AdWords and not through Google Analytics so it cannot be modified (that is, the click data) in important ways.
• Ecommerce Conversion Rate–I honestly have no clue why this is not in there when the custom report has average value and per visit value, but there you have it.

Nonetheless, there are a variety of useful custom reports that you can create and to throw in some fun, albeit more for data research, I can create the following:

• Ad Slot Position & Keywords (and vice versa)–I now know where my keywords show up in a far more useful manner to see whether the PPC ads being clicked on are coming from what position and which side of Google’s SERPs (Can I please beg someone at Google Analytics to provide the same information for SEO?). I can then see how the positions conversion rates are doing for each keyword. More for data research as AdWords has some of this information already and that PPC cannot change their bids based on top of the SERPs versus the right hand side.
• Keyword Visits & Bounces–If you ever want to see a depressing custom report, look no further than a custom report that removes all keyword visits that did not result in a bounce (or one that has all bounces).
• Browser & Per Visit Value–Should you really care about Mac Safari users? You may find that although they may account for a small version of your site traffic, the amount of revenue they generate per visit may necessitate you creating a website that works for the top browsers & computers.

If you are new to custom reports, be sure to check out the Google Analytics video below:

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Just seems I cannot blog about anything else as I keep finding more mistakes around the web today. I go to search for some examples for a post about people being confused between organic results and paid results, and instead I find the following results when I search for the phrase “analytics” in Google:

Let’s first ignore the fact that Google Analytics ranks number one in its SERPs with sitelinks as a potential conflict of interest there (that is a whole other topic), but instead focus on the aspect that www.google.com has three sites ranking!

For the uninitiated in SEO, for every given keyword, you are allowed up to two pages ranking per sub-domain (exception are the sitelinks above). So, just how and why is Google ranking three?

It looks like Google is still having problems with differentiating secured and non-secured HTTP pages around the web and incidentally ranking secured pages as a whole other sub-domain (or site). I have had clients previously deal with these issues usually in a negative situation where the secured homepage would rank instead of the non-secured in a lower position.

Yet, here in the case for Google, with such a high PageRank on both “sites,” it is only an additional benefit for them to get around the two sub-domain pages per keyword limit. Not bad considering it’s a one-phrase keyword.

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People often believe that when something is free, it means two things: 1) Not very good, 2) No competition or a need to update.

As I have previously mentioned about the Golden Age of Analytics with Google Analytics, point one is entirely false as Google has recently been able to really up its game within the web analytics arena by providing some really spectacular online marketing features that will benefit many agencies that take advantage of it. I finally now have access with it for some of my clients and will be salivating through it for probably the next month until I can squeeze just about everything I can from it (my poor GA representative will get to know me over the next month as I call with lots of questions, lol). Go install it after you read this post.

This post tackles the second part with Nuconomy coming out with something that no other qualifiable web analytics package has to date–the ability to track social media traffic and the correlation with them. Now, I know what you should be thinking: Social media does not convert! There is no direct ROI in it. But the counter-argument would be that there is a branding effect, a talking effect, customer interactions, etc. that cannot be measured. Yet, what Nuconomy has done is put their money where their mouth is, tracking those exact effects. Now you can find out whether or not there is an indirect impact for your company and if not, leave the social media fanatics with only this:

So, what do I think is the most important factor in a social media strategy?  Social Media

When competing against a free product or service, you have to be able to market yourself for niche areas, innovate to stay ahead of the pack, and listen to what your customers want. This is where Omniture SiteCatalyst has seriously failed as a Web Analytics provider–it fails to listen to customer complaints (slow load time) and it fails to stay ahead of the pack by not placing in basic SEO tracking that Google Analytics offers for free.

So please, check them out, but do not join the beta–I’m trying to get into that, do not want more competition than there already is to get on that list.

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The announcement of Google Analytics’s new features provided for free will radically shake up the web analytics field for any agency seriously considering or working in the online advertising arena. In my opinion, what used to be a very niche and expensive area will be suddenly available at a far lower cost and to a far larger amount of people leading to a kind of golden age in web data analysis.

The older data analysis through log servers or bulky web analytics packages force companies to spend thousands or millions of dollars every year that often required a programming level of skill such as Sql (sp?) or at the least RegEx (something I had to learn originally for Google Analytics). Google Analytics new features removes the need for such a skill level and brings the ability to provide detailed analyses to a larger amount of people who can quickly and effectively test many kinds of problems, solutions, or findings.

Yes, there will still be a need for the higher level of deep data analysis, but in terms of needing to run an online marketing campaign as efficiently and profitably as possible, Google has opened the floodgates to make this a reality without having to either have a programmer do everything for you or sit and wait on the incredibly slow bulky analytics packages.

I can now run analyses across multiple accounts by the same client in an effort to see if there is an on-going relationship between multiple online marketing channels without having to download the data and do a large amount of data merging with data crunching. In need of an ad hoc report or a hopefully brilliant idea came to mind to test? Google Analytics allows the ability to quickly test the idea without having to get someone else to run it for you or to wait on the data to be collected. The speed at which web analytics data can be analyzed has been reduced dramatically, which in turn should make data analysis as interesting as someone doing analysis within Microsoft Excel. In fact, if you know how to do custom filters in Microsoft Excel, you will find the advanced segmentation in Google Analytics very familiar.

All this analysis brings higher level analysis down to a simpler level—those that quickly jump on this wagon of web data analysis will be the first out of the gate—particularly if a culture is set up—and will win the day in the web’s hyper-competitive environment.

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Word has already spread around about the upcoming seven new features for Google Analytics that is sending the web analytics and online advertising world abuzz. The seven new features to be added are:

1. User Interface refresh for easier dashboard control
2. AdSense integration into GA
3. Advanced visualizations: Motion Charts in five dimensions
4. Custom reports that can cut across multiple accounts
5. Advanced segmentation for simpler and deeper data analysis
6. The Google Analytics API for large data pulls
7. Automatic importing of AdWords cost data into Urchin

Rather than rehash each aspect, I will consolidate the best around the web about what Google has produced with these remarkable new features below:

User Interface Refresh:

[The] tabular layout of accounts is new, and very helpful. If you’re an agency, or a large company, you probably have access to multiple GA accounts. This layout makes it easy to identify performance at the account level.

Key to the new layout is the addition of metrics. Available metrics in are:

• Visits
• Time on Site
• Bounce Rate
• Completed Goals

One column actually does a date comparison. Choose one of the above metrics using the drop down at the top of the column and a simple date range using the buttons at the top right corner of the screen to determine how said metric has changed over the past day, week, month or year.

AdSense Integration (in private beta):

More detailed reports and opportunities to enhance performance and continue with on-going optimization.

Motion Charts:

Part-cool, part-crazy, this amazing tool allows you to see data in 5 dimensions! Data can now be visually displayed on the traditional X and Y axes but there’s also additional time, color, and size dimensions! The Motion chart is extremely useful for spotting peaks and valleys in data and identifying areas which should be analyzed deeper. While it comes with a slight learning curve or adjustment to get yourself familiar with the interface and how to best use the 5 dimensions, there’s no other tool that will give you this type of insight.

Custom Reports:

Many of us would like to create their own reports with their own key metrics and don’t want to be limited to the default reports in GA. This feature is quite user-friendly and allows you to drag-and-drop to create all kinds of reports!

Advanced Segmentation:

Advanced segmentation is a new feature in Google Analytics that lets you segment all data in a profile. […] We now have an incredibly powerful segmentation tool that we can use to identify which segments of our traffic are performing and which are not. This leads to more analysis on the under performing segments and (hopefully) increased site performance.

Google Analytics API (in private beta):

According to Google, the API is in private beta. […] Once the API is rolled out, expect some very creative custom reporting and very useful third-party data integration.

Automatic Adwords Integration with Urchin:

No need to have to rely on another team member or client to bring all the data together; now it should be integrated automatically.

If you’re looking for tips or ideas, I would normally provide that here, but will instead strongly suggest you literally read each and every line over at Avinash’s analytics blog to jumpstart the creative juices. The downside is that I’m going to have to redo a lot of my setups now that I’ve put a lot of time and energy into, but at least the advanced segmentation is retroactive!

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The recent beta launch of Yahoo’s Web Analytics made me think on my preference of Analytics programs for SEO and I thought I would provide my opinion in this matter on the following Analytics packages below. Keep in mind that I am only focusing on Google Analytics and Omniture since they are diametrically different and provide good examples of what to look for in an Analytics package for SEO. I am also not going to comment at this point on Microsoft’s since it is still too early to tell and as for Yahoo’s… well, let’s just say I want to wait awhile longer when Yahoo’s ability as a company to stay afloat is a little more solid.

Omniture and SEO:

Omniture as a web analytics package is one of the top-notch and most expensive out there providing highly detailed and great data for numerous marketing channels. That said, I am looking specifically for SEO, and sadly I have yet to see anyone with good SEO Analytics in Omniture.

Why is this? Essentially it seems that when it comes to organic search and web analytics, few companies take the time and effort to keep natural search in mind and as such, little data is available.

So what can you get for SEO and Omniture? Keyword level data; that’s about it. You can get some detailed level of data such as products via drilling down, but it is very cumbersome and time-inefficient to get all the data you need on a monthly basis. The nice part though is you can see what page you ranked for on Google or other search engines by that keyword, but it’s not as helpful as say position or very easy to download.

What’s missing? Well, the main problem is that Omniture often puts organic and paid together as “search” so that you cannot tell what area people are coming in from! It has been the greatest frustration of mine when working with Omniture. Additionally, due to the way that Omniture is set up, it is not an easy fix–you have to go back to the Omniture people and request the change which takes time and money. This combination of non-paid and paid search means that I cannot tell what keywords people use to hit specific landing pages, only that they came in through a set of keywords.

(UPDATE 10/13/2008: Additionally, per the comments by Tiffany, you can request Omniture’s SearchCenter and get separated data that way.)

Furthermore, when you’re running a content-rich site, once again, the data that is often provided is limited to searches, revenue, transactions, etc., but not bounce rates or time on site. Therefore if I want to establish which pages are providing solid pageviews (eg: people who actually read something and not just hit a page and bounce), Omniture is a no-go.

I do want to make sure that those who are deciding between the web analytics understand one thing: It’s not that Omniture does not have these abilities, it’s that they are not standard! It means you have to prepare in advance what is going to be useful for all channels (or in this case, SEO) and be sure to note those things to the Omniture folks.

Google Analytics and SEO:

Google Analytics is on the complete opposite end providing a free web analytics that is more geared the search marketing agencies rather than to corporations like Omniture. This means the target audiences are quite different mainly as Google Analytics helps smaller companies with highly useful web analytics on the cheap with somewhat more limited options overall. That said, this web analytics program is a bonanza for SEO in my opinion.

Many things come standard within Google Analytics such as keyword level data for non-paid search and the ability to drill by keyword level and then set it to non-paid search, providing myself as a Search Strategist far more data than is available compared to Omniture’s basic settings. Furthermore, Google Analytics provides the ability to create filtered profiles so I can have a profile that will only include organic searches! This essentially means I can now have data such as time of day of visit, geographic visits, browser size, and safely know that everything in that profile is completely organic.

What Google Analytics makes up for basic level SEO analysis, it loses in terms of really far reaching analysis. Google Analytics unfortunately will not provide for SEO what page or position a keyword visit came in on (oh how I wish for this) nor tell me where the returning organic visit first came in on (eg: did they originally came in through email, then left and came back in through organic search).

My preference is strongly towards Google Analytics, but a very strong note of caution. Keep in mind that you are using a Google product–that means you are handing over a lot of potentially competitive data to Google and even your competitors (think Google Trends) and if you ever run decide to afowl of Google, there’s a lot of data available for Google to go through to prove its case.

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