My Predictions for Google Analytics in 2009

Everyone loves to prognosticate, don’t they? From the guys on NBC’s Football Night in America to your buddies at work, everyone likes to predict, forecast, and make guesses as to who will win the Super Bowl / become the next president / be the next American Idol. Usually, most folks turn out to be wrong – even some of the top experts on TV – but, hey, it’s a heck of a lot of fun.

When it comes to blogging, I am not a big fan of prediction posts. However, today, I’m making an exception. I have come up with 5 predictions for Google Analytics in 2009. These are five elements that I am predicting will happen with Google Analytics before the 2009 year is over. This is completely separate from my Google Analytics Wish List that I created a while ago.

My Predictions for Google Analytics in 2009:

1. urchin.js will be eliminated from the system, forcing everyone to officially migrate to ga.js
Ok, so now that I have your attention. This has been a long time coming, folks. urchin.js is the Legacy Tracking Code, and they are eventually going to do away with it entirely. I suspect that this will happen toward the end of 2009, so that everyone has more than enough time to migrate over to ga.js.

2. Google Website Optimizer will be integrated into the Google Analytics interface
This is a matter of convenience. Somehow, Google Website Optimizer will be available via your Google Analytics Account settings, to set-up an A/B or Multivariate Experiment. There will also be reports within the GA Interface from Google Website Optimizer as well.

3.  New “Blogs”, “Mobile”, and “Social Media” report sections will be added
I predict that this will happen sooner rather than later so that you can analyze these three sources of traffic individually from each other. This also means, from a technical standpoint, that Google Analytics will introduce new default medium dimensions, like “social-media” and “mobile”, breaking them off from the “referral” medium, as they appear by default at this time.

4. New Path Analysis reports will be added
Google Analytics will either upgrade the Navigation Summary / Entrance Paths reports, or they will replace them with brand new Path Analysis style reports. The current reports are very tough to understand, much less usable and insightful. That will not be the case any longer in 2009.

5. The Reporting Section will receive a big facelift; new bells and whistles will be added.
The reporting section in Google Analytics at this time is quite limited. You can only schedule an automatic report to be run on a Daily, Weekly, Monthly, or Quarterly basis, and you can only do so much with the Subject and Description lines. Expect some improvements here, with some ability to schedule a report from a custom date range, other file formats (.xls would be nice), and some other neat things.

Will any or all of my predictions come through? We’ll know the answer in a little over 1 year from now.