Google is helping administrators get a clearer view of who is visiting their page. How? Through Flow Visualization, Google’s latest analytics tool, which provides visual graphics on a company’s website. The visuals are a graphical breakdown of website visitor activity. This new tool functions the same as Google’s existing Analytics tool, but providing it in a flow chart style allows for an easier understanding of a visitor’s movement through a site.

The new analytics graphics track the most valued and pertinent information of a user’s progression through the site. It begins at the source and tracks every subsequent page visited, how long the user stayed on the page and also tracks the common behavior of a typical user before he or she leaves the site.

Tracking the web activity and traffic numbers allows administrator’s of a site to tweak their content marketing as well as their internal linking structures to point users in a particular direction based on the current behavior patterns displayed through Flow Visualization. What other aspects could Google’s new tool display in their flow chart to make it even more functional?

Google recently announced that they are hiding keywords used by searchers that are signed into their Google accounts to protect their privacy. When a Google user is signed in and they visit your site from an organic search, Google Analytics will recognize this organic search but now they will not report the keywords that the user had searched to arrive at the site.  Google’s goal is to provide user privacy by not giving out any search information to the sites that users click through to.

However, Google isn’t removing all keyword data, only a sub-set. This has less of an effect on SEO because we can still see current trends in analytics and we can still see the higher traffic keywords. The keywords we see are larger, we no longer see the minority. If there is a specific site that the majority of the visits happen when people are signed in to Google, then there could be a large effect from this loss of ability to see the general keyword trends. Google has said that”an aggregated list of the top 1000 search queries that drove traffic to a site for each of the past 30 days will be available through Webmaster Tools.”

It seems as if there is a bit of a double standard here. Google is saying that this change will have a small impact on only about 10 percent of its searchers, however that is still a good amount of keyword referral information that is kept from the websites owners. But, if those same searchers click on a Google ad, this information is not hidden because Google says  “its advertisers need to be able to measure the effectiveness of their campaigns and to improve the ads and offers they present to you.” What do you think about this change?

Today, Google’s Webmaster Central Blog announced that Search Query data from your Webmaster Tool’s Account (image below) is now available in Google Analytics. The question, why are Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics integrated? Was initially raised in Matt Cutts’ May 25th Live Panda update. Matt Cutts stated that they were different departments within Google and therefore there were barriers to integrating them. Well, these barriers must have been overcome in the months since the update as the data has now been integrated.

How To  Integrate Google Webmaster Tools in Google Analytics:

Data is not automatically integrated between systems. In order to integrate Search Query Data in Google Analytics, you must be an administrator on both the Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools accounts. Once you are an administrator to both accounts, log into your webmaster tools account and locate the site you are looking to integrate with analytics (be sure both accounts have been verified and are working first).

Next, select “Google Analytics property” from the “Manage” dropdown menu. Then select the analytics profile to integrate with.

WARNING: Be sure the profiles you are integrating are similar as un-integrate the profiles will force you to start over again. If you have multiple profiles (subdomains, etc) for analytics, you will want to integrate with the correct profile as well.

Once you’ve selected the domain, click “Save” at the bottom of the page. You will receive another warning informing you that this association will replace any existing Webmaster Tools associations. You can now log into the “New” version of analytics and under “Traffic Sources” you will see a “Search Engine Optimization” drop down menu. This is where the data will be stored.

Google will provide you data from the Top 1,000 daily queries, excluding the most recent 2 calendar days. Do not be surprised to not see data from those two days. Now you are able to segment and analyze data in various ways.

Currently, my favorite method is to view performance of the last 30 days to the previous 30 days. In this way, you can gage click-through rates from one month to the next. You can assess the ranking improvements from one month to the next by comparing the impression counts as well.

What is your favorite data-set to analyze?

When running multiple channels of online media, especially if you have a considerable budget, wouldn’t it make sense to understand how each of those channels may have contributed to a sale or conversion?  Of course.  That way you know how to make educated decisions about how to improve your integrated approach and invest more in the channels that are providing the best ROI. 

Until recently, analytics platforms including Google Analytics only tracked the “last click” when recording a conversion.  So for example, you may have Google Analytics set up with goal tracking.  Let’s say your conversion is a form fill.  When looking at your conversions in Analytics you see that your branded PPC campaign is driving the majority of leads.  But in this example you are also running non-branded PPC keywords, you have organic rankings, and you are running display and retargeting.  So based on Analytics you decide to make no changes to your campaigns because you are already maxed out on spend for branded PPC terms. 

But maybe this is what really happened:

1. User does a search while researching products similar to yours and clicks on a link to a blog about such similar products
2. While on this blog the user sees a display ad for your product and clicks through to your website
3. They look at a couple pages but then leave without converting
4. Two weeks later they remember looking at your site and run a search for your product; your site shows up number 2 in the organic results and they click through but do not convert
5. Then five days later they do a branded search (keyword search for your company name), see your PPC add at the top, click through and fill out your form

Based on this example, you should attribute the majority of the success for this particular conversion to your display campaign.  Maybe that information leads you to make further ad buys on additional networks which drives even more conversions.  But without seeing this click path and understanding how the user actually first discovered your company, you will make the wrong decisions.  The image below helps illustrate how limiting it is to base marketing decisions on Last Click data.

Google recently launched their version of attribution analytics within Google Analytics called Multi-Channel Funnels.  While this does ad value there are a couple key limitations:

1. It is a cookie based tracking system
2. It only tracks for a 30 day period

Internet Marketing Inc. takes this a step further with our multi-attribution analytics solutions which are based on fingerprinting and can track a user for months, even over a year.  Our platform tracks across all online media channels and has the ability to track a user on different computers (i.e. your office PC and home desktop).  Lean more about our attribution analytics and open your eyes to true decision making ability!  Start NOW

Often times SEO companies will target a list of keywords for optimization. Month over month you will get ranking reports showing how you are doing in the various search results pages (SERPs). Even when tied to overall traffic numbers, or branded vs. non-branded, these reports do not fully show you how the website is doing in terms of the target keywords driving traffic to the website.

Using Google Analytics and excel makes it a relatively simple task to evaluate over a defined period of time how many visits a specific keyword is sending to the site. At first glance you may say, but it is easy to simply search the analytics database for a specific keyword. I agree this is not a difficult task. However, searching 70 times may be a bit more challenging when done on a weekly basis. In addition to identifying exact search terms that are driving traffic, often times marketers will refer to long tail variations driving traffic.

There two things I plan to show you. The First is how to extract the data we need from google analytics. The second item is how to then take this data and identify which keywords are performing well and which ones are not. From a performance standpoint we can look at visits, goal completions, or even revenue.  (note, this demo will not show you how to setup ecommerce or goals as that is a whole separate topic)

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Two recent independent developments promise to shakeup the way traffic is measured on the Internet.  First Google announced plans to soon allow users to opt-out of being tracked through Google Analytics.  Secondly, the increased deployment of Flash cookies over HTML cookies has given analysts and business people a bit of encouragement, as Flash cookies are more sophisticated and harder to detect than their HTML counterpart, stoking the fears of privacy advocates wary of the amount of information collected on Google and search engine servers.

Anxiety Over the Future of Analytics

Google’s announcement poses some serious questions as to how traffic will be measured on the Internet.  Precipitated by growing concerns over privacy on the web, Google appears to be attempting to set itself in front of the issue and above the fray.  As Google Analytics is already an imperfect system, statistical purists find themselves asking whether data can be trusted once users can prevent their information from being tracked.  Once a significant number of Internet users opt-out, Google Analytics information may be rendered less useful.  Businesses will not doubt turn to other analytic services; however, the question remains whether other analytics tools will follow Google’s lead and offer users the same option.

On the flip side of the debate, analysts look to the promise of Flash cookies.  As mentioned above, Flash cookies are more sophisticated and pose hurdles for a user to detect and delete.  Furthermore, Flash cookies, one of the Internet’s better kept secrets, can re-spawn after deletion.  The additional hurdles users would need to overcome to free themselves from Flash tracking than simply opting out of Google Analytics could ensure that analytic information would retain its accuracy and integrity.

Not So Fast, Flash Cookies

Unfortunately for businesses and analysts, the public isn’t quite as ignorant to Flash cookies as they would like.  A recent article in OnlineMediaDaily claims that 7% of Flash cookies are deleted, which may not seem like a significant proportion; however, this number has doubled in the past 10 months.