Let’s do something here on our Analytics & Site Intelligence blog that quite honestly we don’t do enough of: talk about pure statistics! Can you feel the excitement running through your veins? Oh wait, that’s only me.

As the Web Analytics industry becomes more and more mature, the requirement to understand basic statistical concepts becomes greater and greater. Awesome new features, like Google Analytics’ Intelligence report section and predictive modeling features from Google Insights for Search, beg the user to dive deep on their web data, segment it, grab insights, make a conclusion, and take meaningful actions.

Sure, you can do all that without knowing a lick about statistics, but chances are very high that you’ll start to get confused, lost, and overwhelmed along the way. Think of statistics like contractors think about a foundation for building a home – we all know what happens without a strong foundation!

Enter “Standard Deviation”, which is quite possibly (next to mean) the most important element in the field of statistics. Standard Deviation is the variance (another stat term!) from the mean (average) of a set of data.

Let’s say that the average football fan watches 3.5 hours of football a week, with a standard deviation of .5 hours (a half-hour). This means that – assuming a normal distribution (a third stats term!!) – most football fans (about 68% of them) will watch anywhere from 3 to 4 hours of football a week. Since the average is 3.5, and the standard deviation is .5, watching 4 hours of football a week is said to be “one standard deviation above the mean”. Conversely, watching 3 hours of football is said to be “one standard deviation below the mean”.

However, almost all football fans (which is about 95% of them, assuming a normal distribution), will watch anywhere between 2.5 and 4.5 hours of football, which is said to be “two standard deviations above or below the mean”. It’s two standard deviations above or below the mean, because 2.5 hours or 4.5 hours is two “.5’s” above or below our mean of 3.5.

In statistics, it is generally considered unusual if a particular data point (like, watching 9 hours of football) is above or below two standard deviations from the mean. Watching an average of 9 hours a week of football for the average football fan is way…WAY above 2s (two standard deviations), so this would be considered highly unusual for the average football fan.

What it means for you (the Web Analyst)?
Knowing what Standard Deviation is and how it’s used in Web Analytics will help you get an idea of just how important events that happen on your website could be. For example, in the new Intelligence Section in Google Analytics, you may see some alerts for an increase in Revenue from different regions:

If you notice on the left-hand side of the image, the revenue for this particular time period increased by 111% from North Carolina from the expected revenue. This is definitely significant (check out the significance bar on the right), as it’s about 3 or even 4 standard deviations above the mean! Perhaps your new PPC campaigns that were targeted to North Carolina were successful, and you can now duplicate that success everywhere else! Or maybe your email marketing strategy worked, and North Carolina residents responded so well that you can re-market to them in 1-2 months.

In that same image, the Revenue from the United Kingdom increased by 46%, which is about one or possibly two standard deviations above the mean. It’s not as significant of an increase as North Carolina’s, but still worthy of your attention nonetheless. Apply the same negative keywords or the same match types for your other international campaigns as well!

So now that you know what standard deviation is all about, use reports like Google Analytics’ Intelligence section to get a truer, deeper meaning of just how significant certain trends are that happen on your website, which will allow you to improve whatever it is that you are doing exponentially. You’ll be a better analyst for it!

Even to this very day, I am so surprised at just how much our Web Analytics industry has grown over the past couple of years. Now more than ever, website owners understand the need and the value of Web Analytics, so it’s a great time to be in this industry.

MoreVisibility is, of course, a Google Analytics Authorized Consultant (AKA: GAAC), which puts us right on the bleeding edge of the industry. And when it comes to growth, Google Analytics reigns supreme. Features like Intelligence, Custom Reports, Advanced Segments, Motion Charts, and many others have all been released relatively recently, and there should be a lot more to come in 2010!

Today I’d like to highlight five things that you may not know that Google Analytics does / can do. They are:

1. Goal Verification
Are you using regular expressions in your Goal URLs? For example, let’s say that you wanted to see all Goal Matches for your “PDF Download” Goal. Your goal – which is set-up to match all “.pdf” extensions – can be segmented by the full virtual pageview in this Goal Verification report within the Goals section. This can be very helpful for a lot of site owners, as they can have lots of PDF files available for download on their site:

2. Hourly Breakdown (How “far behind” Google Analytics is)
The trending graph in almost every report in Google Analytics defaults to a daily display, and most folks know how to modify the graph to show weekly or monthly graphing. What usually surprises people is that you can also switch to an hourly graph in some (not all) reports by clicking on the tiny clock symbol.

Tip: Ever wanted to know how “far behind” Google Analytics is in displaying your data? Switch your date-range to today and go into any report with an hourly trending graph option (The ones in the Visitors section will work). Then, graph by hour and scroll down the histogram to see where the data collection ends. Compare that to the current time and you’ll know how up-to-date Google Analytics is! You may be pleasantly surprised: I snapped this screen-shot at 9AM local time:

3. Hostnames (websites using my tracking code)
Staying in the Visitors section of reports is another gem. Click on Network Properties and then click on Hostnames to view a full list of every domain and sub-domain that has your Google Analytics Tracking Code on it. This can either be very relieving or very eye-opening to you, depending on what you expect to find . It’s a good idea to check out this report at least once – just to make sure any domains or sub-domains that are supposed to be excluded, are being excluded, or any sites that also have your tracking code are being tracked in that profile.

4. Keyword Positions
Did you know that Google Analytics can give you AdWords Keyword Positions, and metrics per ad position? This is definitely one of my favorite reports that lots of people don’t know about. Go to Traffic Sources, then AdWords, and then Keyword Positions. If your Google Analytics is properly synced to your Google AdWords account, you should have no problem being able to see visits per position with this nifty report. Click on a keyword on the left-hand side to view the visit position breakdown, and switch that drop-down menu which rests above the position table to “Revenue” for very revealing and insightful Ecommerce analysis:

5. Top Content by Title
Ever get tired of reading through your URLs in your Top Content report? Wish you could read actual words instead of the URL itself to figure out which page is which? Below the extremely popular Top Content report rests a Content by Title report that may be of interest to you. This is exactly the same thing as the Top Content report, except that it lists pages by the <title> meta-tag that you have within each page’s source code. Because it uses the <title> tag, and not the URLs, pages with the exact same <title> tag will be grouped together; as SEO best-practices dictates, you should make sure each page on your site has a uniquely written <title> tag.

There you have it – five things that you now DO know about Google Analytics!

Happy Holidays everyone! While some of us have been taking  time off, the fine folks at Google Analytics have been working hard at improving the technical side of their web analytics solution. It’s very important for the continued growth of Google Analytics that new tracking codes and functions be released from time to time. Today, I’d like to cover some of the more recent technical releases, including a new tracking code and some updates to the Google Analytics API.

New Asynchronous Tracking Code

On the first day of December 2009, Google Analytics introduced an alternate way of tracking your website’s pages with its new asynchronous tracking code (nicknamed “async”). The async tracking code takes advantage of a faster loading time and improved browser execution to provide better, more reliable, higher accuracy data. Async still uses the ga.js file, but it is far less dependent upon how the browser loads ga.js, making for a better user-experience for the web visitor.

The way that it works is that the async tracking code is placed toward the bottom of the <head> section of each web page of a website. Then, similar to the ga.js tracking code, the web property ID is specificed (your “UA” number) and then the call to _trackPageview is made, which sends data back to Google Analytics servers. Here’s what the base async tracking code looks like:

<script type="text/javascript">
 var _gaq = _gaq || [];
 _gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-XXXXXX-X']);
 _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);
 (function() {
 var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type
= 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true;
 ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ?
'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js';
 (document.getElementsByTagName('head')[0] ||
document.getElementsByTagName('body')[0]).
appendChild(ga);  })();
</script>

The _gaq object that you see at the beginning of the script is what makes the asynchronous tracking possible with Google Analytics. It’s like a queue, collecting each object until the browser is ready to execute them (vs. the standard tracking code which waits for the browser to begin collecting data).

However, with the async tracking code, there is more than one way to skin a cat. Instead of using multiple calls to _gaq.push, you can push all of your commands at once, if you prefer:

_gaq.push(
 ['_setAccount', 'UA-XXXXX-X'],
 ['_trackPageview']
);

Heck, you can even split your async tracking script into two parts, if that is more convinient for you. If your site uses a lot of javascript and rich media, you should definitely consider switching to the async tracking code. Even if you have a “lightweight” site, you should still switch over and reap the benefits of faster, more accurate website traffic data.

New Analytics Tracking Code Wizard

The next time you log-in to your Google Analytics account, and you’re looking for your tracking code by clicking on the “Check Status” link, you may see a new wizard:

This Google Analytics Tracking Code Wizard is designed to make your life a bit easier by asking you a series of questions on the left of the tracking code. Depending upon your answers, your Google Analytics Tracking Code will be modified accordingly, which should reduce the amount of time digging through Google’s technical documents online. This wizard is also available when you create a new profile or Google Analytics account.

Obviously, you should always consult with a Google Analytics Authorized Consultant (like us) before doing any technical implementation on your site.

New Tracking Code Changelog

If you’re really into the Google Analytics Tracking Code, you can subscribe to the Google Analytics Changelog, where you can receive updates as they happen to the Google Analytics Tracking Code. Some of the newest updates have been the deprecation of _setVar, the added controls for cookie expiration times, and new organic search engines added to ga.js. Check out the changelog and subscribe to it today!

New Google Analytics API Features

The Google Analytics API Client Python Library was just updated a couple of weeks ago, allowing developers to write programs and applications in the languages that they know and love.

This update coincides with the new API features that were launched three weeks ago. The new Google Analytics API features include support for Advanced Segmentation, Goal 5-20 configuration data, and new support for Custom Variables. If you’re a developer and haven’t used the API in a few weeks, log-in today and check out how powerful the GA API has now become!

Other Google Analytics Updates

How about something a little less technical? Google Analytics has released several new features in 2009. Most recently, the Google Analytics team released Annotations, which are notes that you can insert directly into any trending graph in Google Analytics. This allows marketers, website owners, and IT departments to keep track of all important events and bring “tribal data” from your company right into Google Analytics! Log-in to your account today and begin to import and share your knowledge across your organization!

We hope that you have a happy new year and enjoy all of these new technical Google Analytics updates in 2010!

Earlier today at the Search Engine Strategies conference in Chicago, Mr. Phil Mui, Google Analytics Senior Product Manager, announced several new features for Google Analytics that build on last month’s big feature release. This included the new Intelligence section, Custom Alerts, and Multiple Custom Variables.

Today’s announcement included the introduction to Annotations, the news that custom variables are now segmentable and available in Custom Reports, and the release of a new Analytics Setup Wizard. Let’s review each feature!

1. Annotations
Annotations are the first of its kind in Google Analytics, as they allow you to insert data into a Google Analytics trending graph. By using annotations, you can make notes and keep track of dips and spikes in traffic, right on your trending graphs. This should hopefully cut down the amount of time needed to track information down between departments of your organization, and it should also help capture the “tribal” intelligence that floats around your company:

Annotations are available in every trending graph in all reports. You also have the option to either make them private, so only you can see them, or make them public, so that any user with access to the profile can view them. Finally, you can favorite your most important annotations by clicking on the famous yellow-star, like you can in just about every Google product.

No more hunting down your webmaster / IT director / marketing manager for an explanation of why traffic sky-rocketed, when marketing emails got sent out, or how long the server crash lasted. No more looking at bulky spreadsheets filled with launch dates and release notes. Now, with annotations, you can keep a logbook of everything important that happens in your organization!

2. Custom Variables now Segmentable, Available in Custom Reports
Multiple Custom Variables, which allow you to collect unique site usage data for your most important buckets of website traffic and visitors, can now be segmented using an Advanced Segment. Previously, the only way to view these metrics was to crack open the new Visitors >> Custom Segments report. Now, you can perform deep-dive analysis like you can with virtually every other metric or dimension!

3. Analytics Setup Wizard
The next time you create a profile in Google Analytics, you’ll notice a new tracking code setup wizard that will guide you along the way. Depending on your needs (tracking sub-domains, multiple top-level domains, integrating Google AdSense or even tracking PHP or dynamic content pages), you’ll be able to configure your tracking code appropriately so that you or your web team can track everything as accurately as possible!

BONUS: New Version of the Google Analytics API
How about a tease? Later this week, Google Analytics will be making a separate announcement for some exciting new features to the Google Analytics API, including support for Advanced Segments and support for the new metrics and dimensions that have been made available to Google Analytics in recent months!

Look for all of these exciting new features to be available in your Google Analytics accounts soon!

Hopefully, everyone had an awesome Thanksgiving holiday filled with fun, family, and food! Did you stand in line at 4AM for Black Friday? Yeah, me neither.

Anyways, now that mostly everyone in the U.S. is back to their normal routines (including me), we can talk about a brand new feature that Google Analytics released last month called Advanced Table Filtering. It’s found at the bottom of all standard report tables in Google Analytics and it allows you to do some pretty neat “on-the-fly” deep analysis of any data set.

Advanced Table Filtering lets you filter the rows in a table based on the conditions that you specify, just like when you create an Advanced Segment and apply it to your profile. This new feature, along with Secondary Dimensions and Pivoting (which were released earlier this year) can help your analysis efforts tremendously!

To start using an Advanced Table Filter, scroll to the very bottom of any of the “standard” looking report tables in Google Analytics and find the blue Advanced Filter” link, next to the regular table filter:

While you can still use the standard filter that allows you to contain or exclude data from a report, you can create an “on-the-fly” advanced segment by clicking on “Advanced Filter”. When you do, the table expands and you get to design your Advanced Filter:

In the example shown in the image above, I want to see only Google traffic that has a bounce rate less than 50% and an average time on site greater than or equal to 180 (3 minutes) in my All Traffic Sources report. This specific criteria took me all of 10 seconds to create and “Boom!” my All Traffic Sources report just got a whole lot more segmented:

Now, I get a better sense of how my Google traffic is receiving my website content, which points me in the right direction to start optimizing my site, my pay-per-click campaigns, or my email marketing efforts!

Advanced Table Filters should be activated within all Google Analytics accounts soon, so that you too can perform cool “on-the-fly” table segmentation like me!