Google Analytics Blog

It's already difficult enough for humans to understand humans, so I wouldn't worry too much about this. What I do expect is that the least sophisticated parts of jobs like conversion optimisation will eventually become largely automated. Humans would still input the constraints, but the machine generates the inputs for a multivariate test, measures results, decides which variant performs best and rolls it out to all users. Think The Grid [1] mashed up with Multi-armed Bandid Experiments [2] [1] https://thegrid.io [2] http://analytics.blogspot.nl/2013/01/multi-armed-bandit-experiments.ht…

That's sounds great. Google had also just launched a short course to improve your Analytics skills: http://analytics.blogspot.com/2013/10/analytics-academy.html

It's under Standard Reporting -> Content -> Site Speed The GA code will track client side page load time (DOM fully loaded) across your site. You'll get site-wide averages and you'll also get to drill in on slow pages. This doesn't work for every single browser (last I checked it only worked for browsers that support HTML5), but it still provides a good sample size. It's also important to do this as Google Webmaster tools dropped support of the Site Speed lab which shows you how fast Google thinks your site is ( <1.5 seconds user DOM load is considered faster, >= 1.5 seconds is "slow"). If you're trying to improve your Google ranking you need to be tracking how fast Google thinks your site is. (Also, fast websites are great for lots of reasons, not just Google ranking.) See also: http://analytics.blogspot.com/2011/05/measure-page-load-time-with-site…

Google owns Blogger and hosts all their official blogs there. Example: http://analytics.blogspot.com/ That does not prove gmailaccountrecovery.blogspot.com is an official blog though. Edit: for clarity

"We just turned the reports on for a number of you, and over the coming weeks, everyone will have access to Real-Time. If you can’t wait, sign up for early access here: https://services.google.com/fb/forms/realtimeanalytics/. We’d love to hear about how you are using (or planning to use) Real-Time, so please share in the comments." http://analytics.blogspot.com/2011/09/whats-happening-on-your-site-rig… /via http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3053483

August 11th - Update to Sessions in Google Analytics (F*ck Up) - http://analytics.blogspot.com/2011/08/update-to-sessions-in-google-ana… August 12th - Major International Algorithm Update "Panda" http://insidesearch.blogspot.com/2011/08/high-quality-sites-algorithm-… great timing...

I found this reference from Google's analytics blog (which documents the change in Referer:s that people should expect), which seems to argue that ot is right: this behavior has been in place since 2009. http://analytics.blogspot.com/2009/04/upcoming-change-to-googlecom-sea… (edit:) One of the comments from "Brett Crosby, Sr. Manager, Google Analytics" looks interesting: """Sorry for the delay in responding (especially Andre), I was seeking clarification from the search team. A lot of the comments were directed to them and I think it is best to let that team handle those questions. I do want to answer some of the Analytics questions though. Phil's comment above is correct. I posted this because a couple months ago Google tested some search results that added a # into the URL. This created a big problem for people interested in seeing which keywords were driving traffic to their site (anything in the URL after a # doesn't get passed in the referrer... this is particularly a problem for web analytics products), so we worked with the search team to stop that test until they could find a better solution. The announcement above is the answer to that. It allows them to test new search results without the negative side effects (if it introduced others, that was not the intent). Some of the other comments had interesting theories about why we did this (grassy knolls not included), but the goal was to allow new tests of search without making it difficult for analytics…

http://analytics.blogspot.com/2013/09/supporting-modern-browsing-exper… "As a note, we’ll of course continue to measure traffic from IE8 browsers to your website." That's all I need google. Thanks.

A/B testing is a catch-all term for multi-variant experimentation. Multi-armed bandit is a specific approach to testing[1], and even though most frameworks provide A/B/N testing -- that is, not necessarily just two variants -- it is easier to say 'A/B' instead of 'A/B/N'. http://analytics.blogspot.ca/2013/01/multi-armed-bandit-experiments.ht…

This is definitely good news, but I'm more excited/relieved that you can now query custom dimensions/metrics via API. Prior to this we were forced to run both Google Analytics and Universal Analytics in parallel. We are tracking the same exact things via customVars in GA as we are in UA using custom dimensions/metrics. http://analytics.blogspot.com/2013/07/40-new-data-points-in-google-ana… We plan to unwind our GA account fairly soon. Has anyone else been running GA and UA in parallel?

Original w/o the non-value-add regurgitation: http://analytics.blogspot.com/2013/08/google-analytics-launches-real-t…

OP here. I just came by the announcement of the Content Experiment API [1] through Analytics' newsletter (and I'm not the only one around here), and I'm very excited because my plugin appears to be complementary with it. Support for this API pushed up in the priority queue and will be available soon. In the meantime, use the good old custom variables and events to track your changes. [1] http://analytics.blogspot.fr/2013/06/google-analytics-becomes-robust-t…

Will 5.1 or 6 discuss some aspects of the Multi Armed Bandit approach, ala http://analytics.blogspot.com/2013/01/multi-armed-bandit-experiments.h… ? Looking forward to the whole series!

I really liked the idea behind a product called Trendly (unfortunately it got shut down because Twitter bought the team). They had some clever algorithms that simplified time series data from google analytics so that you could see at what points real changes occurred. Some screenshots here: http://analytics.blogspot.com.au/2009/08/api-integration-to-measure-si… You can see how it's able to take something noisy like time series data and turn it into a stream of discrete events. It's really quite clever.

> Edit: If anybody can work out a way to share custom reports in Google Analytics, let me know - I would be interested in sharing reports with others, for specific cases such as this. Haven't tried it myself but it seems like you can share reports and dashboards in Google Analytics: http://analytics.blogspot.com/2012/03/share-your-custom-reports-advanc… https://support.google.com/analytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=24…

Extremely relevant - http://analytics.blogspot.com/2012/09/mobile-friendly-sites-turn-visit…

Can you actually point to a new part or dropped clause of the new policies that you're objecting to? Or did you just read the blog post and decide to share? Wariness is good, but innuendo does no one any favors (sorry, this sort of post really bugs me). The analytics team continually repeats exactly out what they do with user data[1], and a two second search found the +1 button privacy policy[2]. Yes, they might be lying, but they probably wouldn't update the privacy policy then, would they? There are no doubt concerns, but be specific. Disclosure: I use Analytics on my site and pick apart every morsel of data in there that I can. Sorry. [1] (they did it again today!) http://analytics.blogspot.com/2012/01/googles-updated-privacy-policy-w… [2] http://support.google.com/plus/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1319578

I wonder if this data will be available in the $100k+ a year Google Analytics Premium product they announced a couple weeks ago. http://analytics.blogspot.com/2011/09/introducing-google-analytics-pre…

Google Analytics won't have the queries either: http://analytics.blogspot.com/2011/10/making-search-more-secure-access…

Not for signed in users: http://analytics.blogspot.com/2011/10/making-search-more-secure-access… To help you better identify the signed in user organic search visits, we created the token “(not provided)” within Organic Search Traffic Keyword reporting. You will continue to see referrals without any change; only the queries for signed in user visits will be affected. Note that “cpc” paid search data is not affected. This will make it much more difficult to measure organic search marketing efforts, but for Google, this should encourage more investment in paid marketing campaigns to measure keyword effectiveness.

How does your service differentiate from Google Analytics now they are introducing real-time? Google announcement: http://analytics.blogspot.com/2011/09/whats-happening-on-your-site-rig…

From http://analytics.blogspot.com/2010/07/will-using-google-analytics-have… "[Google] Search Quality in general does not use Google Analytics in ranking ... You can use Google Analytics, you can not use Google Analytics, it won't affect your ranking within Google Search results." It's dated middle of last year, I guess it's possible that something has changed, but nothing I'm aware of.

I was hired to do consulting so it wasn't my direct employer but this was a pretty quick change (<5mins) that saved a lot of money(>$500,000 / year): http://analytics.blogspot.com/2010/07/using-wrong-tracking-code-can-co…

Original link: http://analytics.blogspot.com/2010/10/introducing-in-page-analytics-vi…

Have you tried the Google Analytics Benchmarking feature: http://analytics.blogspot.com/2008/03/benchmarking-now-available-plus.… It's pretty neat. It will give you a fair idea of where your website stands comparatively.

Actually it was just trying to tell me to upgrade to the new Google Analytics code: http://analytics.blogspot.com/2009/12/google-analytics-launches-asynch…

There is their “Data Export API” currently in private beta. See the bottom of this post: http://analytics.blogspot.com/2008/10/more-enterprise-class-features-a…

which is here: http://analytics.blogspot.com/2008/10/more-enterprise-class-features-a…

Found this: http://analytics.blogspot.com/2008/10/more-enterprise-class-features-a… Unfortunately, it's a read-only data API.