In our previous post, Google Releases Googlebot-Mobile: Part I; we talked about Google’s update to Googlebot-Mobile to include a Smartphone User-Agent.  The future of mobile search looks bright and we urge you to consider the impact mobile is currently having and will have in the future.

If you have not done so already, we strongly recommend that you access a report about the mobile devices currently sending traffic to your website.  You can reach The Devices Report by navigating through Standard Reporting>Audience>Mobile>Devices.  The Devices Report breaks down your traffic by Mobile Device and allows you to see how Site Usage numbers are performing over time (for example, set the date range to compare to the same time last year).  Additionally, you can set the report to one of your Goal Sets or to Ecommerce, to see which mobile devices are delivering converting traffic.

This report can also be used to view Dimensions such as Mobile Device Branding (the maker of a device, such as Apple, HTC, SonyEricsson, or T-Mobile), Service Provider (such as T-Mobile, AT&T, Comcast, or Sprint), and Mobile Input Selector (such as touchscreen, joystick, or clickwheel).  You can also select the Map Overlay tab to view mobile traffic by country of origin (or delve deeper into the report to view mobile traffic by City, Continent, or Sub Continent Region).  A nice feature of the Mobile Device Info section of this report is the little grey camera icon, that when clicked, has a pop-up of images pulled by Google of the device, so that you can visually associate the item with the name in the Mobile Device Info column.

If you are interested in discussing how mobile search and mobile visitors can impact your business, please contact us.  If you are interested in learning more about how MoreVisibility can help develop a mobile version of your website, please visit our Mobile Website Design Services Page.

Google announced an update to Googlebot-Mobile on Thursday, December 15 in a post titled, Introducing smartphone Googlebot-Mobile.  This post let the community know that Googlebot-Mobile now crawls with a Smartphone user-agent in addition to the Feature phones user-agent.  As time goes on, more eyes – and fingers – turn to mobile search.  Does your business have a plan on how to best optimize your online presence whether a visitors views by laptop, desktop, or hand-held device?  Do you have a plan in place specifically for those searching and browsing on Smartphones?

Michael Martin recently wrote a post for Search Engine Land titled, SEO Considerations For Google Mobile Search In 2012 that gives a few tips for preparing and reacting to mobile search changes.  These tips include enabling user-agent detection, keeping an eye on load time and user experience, using semantic coding with microformats, and coding with HTML5 and jQuery.  Google has already made it clear that they are pushing improvements for mobile reporting and mobile search user experience in a blog post entitled, A look back at 2011 on the Google Mobile Ads Blog.  This post gave some detailed statistics for mobile trends in 2011 that are shaping mobile advancements slated for 2012.

If you are interested in discussing how mobile search and mobile visitors can impact your business, please contact us.  If you are interested in learning more about how MoreVisibility can help develop a mobile version of your website, please visit our Mobile Website Design Services Page.

In a previous blog post, What Questions Can Google Analytics Answer? (Part I), we scratched the surface with an explanation of what Google Analytics is and how it can be used to see where people visiting to your website are coming from.  We also briefly touched upon Google Analytics’ ability to break down data by location or by technical factors such as operating system or screen resolution.  In this blog post, we will discuss how Google Analytics can answer questions such as:

Are Visitors Using Mobile Devices? 

The New Version of Google Analytics has two reports specifically designed to track Mobile traffic: the Mobile Overview Report and the Mobile Devices Report.  You can reach The Overview Report by navigating through Standard Reporting>Audience>Mobile>Overview and you can reach The Devices Report by navigating through Standard Reporting>Audience>Mobile>Devices.  The Mobile Overview Report, set to Ecommerce can quickly tell you if your mobile traffic is converting.  

Where Are Visitors Going on My Website?

There are a number of different reports that could answer this question, depending on what you are looking for specifically.  Check out the reports within the Site Content section located under Standard Reporting>Content>Site Content.  The Pages Report in particular has a wealth of data about pages on your website.  The Explorer tab within the report allows you to view data about specific pages, the Navigation Summary tab allows you to select a page and see the number of pageviews for those who entered or exited your site from that page.  You can also see the previous and next pages visited.  The third tab on the Pages Report, In-Page, overlays bubbles with data (such as percentage of clicks, transactions, revenue, or specific goals) so you can see where visitors clicked on your site and followed through with an action (in the case of transactions, revenue, etc.).

The examples above are only a few of the thousands of questions Google Analytics can help answer.  If you have a specific question, please contact us or sign up for a free analytics consultation.

Google Analytics offers three Social reports within the Standard Reporting>Audience>Social section.  These three reports are:

• Social Engagement
• Social Action
• Social Pages

The Social Engagement Report located under the Standard Reporting>Audience>Engagement section breaks down visitor traffic into two buckets: Not Socially Engaged and Socially Engaged.  Clicking on the Socially Engaged Social Type will break down the visits by Social Source and Action pairings, for example Facebook : View, Google+ : View, and Google : +1.  This deeper breakdown is similar to the Social Action Report.

The Social Action Report located under the Standard Reporting>Audience>Action visually displays the different Social Source and Action pairings by a percentage of total social actions.  You can modify the data to display the number of Social Actions, Unique Social Actions, or Actions Per Social Visit for each Social Source and Action pairing.

The Social Pages Report located under the Standard Reporting>Audience>Pages shows a list of pages (under the headline Social Entity) and which Social Source and Action pairings are delivering Social Actions to each page.

The three reports above are only a few of the ways with which you can view your data through Google Analytics to learn more about the visitors coming to your site.  If you would like more information about how Google Analytics can help your business, please contact us or sign up for a free analytics consultation.

What Is Google Analytics?

Google Analytics is a web analytics solution designed to help website owners, marketers, and other business professionals measure and track their website’s traffic, on-site content interaction, conversions (including Goals and Ecommerce), and more!  Google Analytics also integrates with other Google products such as AdSense, AdWords, and Google Webmaster Tools to help provide the most comprehensive collection of data possible, as well as to help track return on investment of advertising spend.

What Traffic Is My Website Receiving?

If you are wondering what websites are sending people to your site, check out the Referral Traffic Report, located under Traffic Sources>Sources>Referrals in the left hand navigation of the Standard Reporting section of the New Version of Google Analytics.  This report includes referring sites in categories such as social (twitter.com, linkedin.com, etc.), blogs (blogspot.com, wordpress.com, etc.), and a variety of other sites.

Check out the All Traffic Report under Traffic Sources>Sources>All Traffic to see how many visits each Source/Medium pairing is delivering to your site.  By learning more about your website’s visitors and adjusting your strategy to include ways to improve their future experiences you can improve the performance of your website. Additionally you can refine this report to answer a myriad of other questions such as, “what Operating Systems are visitors using?” (select Operating System as a Secondary Dimension), or “what screen resolution are visitors using to view my website?” (select Screen Resolution as a Secondary Dimension), or even “what cities are driving the most traffic to my website?” (select City as a Secondary Dimension).  Of course you could also select any of these dimensions from the “Other” dropdown menu to make them the primary Dimensions used in this report.

What About ____ – Can Google Analytics Track That?

The examples above are only a few of the thousands of questions Google Analytics can help answer.  If you have a specific question, please contact us or sign up for a free analytics consultation.