This list might be disconcerting for web analysts. Google TV—and other emerging technologies—will turn web analytics on its ear.
Google TV is coming to consumers fall of 2010. Google announced a partnership with Intel, Sony and Logitech to essentially turn any HDTV into a dedicated media PC. Google released notes for developers who want to design sites that are TV-friendly. This all made me realize that Google TV will have a major impact on web analytics by redefining how we think about user behavior.
Here is a non-comprehensive list of ways Google TV may change the web analytics landscape.
Today Google announced a secure search page using SSL to encrypt data being sent back and forth during a search. This prevents other people from seeing what you are searching for on Google, although it doesn't change anything about what information Google stores.
One startling implication of this new technology is what it does to Google Analytics reports. In short, searches done from the secure search page will be tracked as direct visits (instead of google searches) in Google Analytics — and every other web analytics software. Even the keyword data is lost.
Many business are tapping into the value of social media. It operates unlike any other type of online marketing, and the rules are constantly shifting. With this shift in focus, web analytics vendors have started to announce partnerships or tools to integrate social media tracking into their product.
Companies using web analytics have to decide how they will track and measure their social media efforts alongside their online marketing and website traffic. How can social media be tracked in Google Analytics? How can a company compare their social media against their banner ads and cpc?
The short answer is, they shouldn't.
There are (at least) three reasons social media can't be tracked accurately in web analytics tools. Some kind of integration isn't intrinsically bad, but making web analytics software a one-stop source for measuring everything online is a mistake.
Web analytics software companies are still touting their (recent) ability to segment mobile traffic in reports. This is important primarily because people using mobile devices interact with sites differently than people using more conventional machines.
With iPads and competing tablets entering the scene, the terrain becomes a bit more complex. It raises important new questions for the web analytics industry and companies who rely on it.
Google announced the introduction of an application gallery with tools for Google Analytics. We are proud that their list of tools includes two of our own: LinkTagger and Mobile GA.
We encourage users to leave comments and reviews for these tools.
Understanding who your site visitors are is one of the most critical steps in optimizing your online presence. Google Analytics can help you to understand who your visitors are and what their expectations are. Yet, too often, companies focus exclusively on marketing or overall site performance, without taking the time to understand the types of people they are trying to interact with.
This article will not only challenge you to dig deeper into oft-ignored reports for insights, but it will also point you to some other tools to analyze the data.
Advanced Segmentation is arguably the most powerful feature ever introduced to Google Analytics. It allows you to specify a set of criteria and view almost every standard report for just the visits that meet that definition without needing to reprocess data or wait for more data to fill in. New applications for Advanced Segments are still found everyday.
For example, use Advanced Segments to analyze every aspect of the visits that interacted with your gift module before noon but didn't complete a purchase. Create multiple segments and compare them against each other in the same report.
In short, Google Analytics now has a powerful ad hoc reporting mechanism.
Google Analytics can tell you what's wrong with your site.
Google Analytics is a powerful tool for improving online conversions. It helps to answer two fundamental questions:
How is my website performing?
How is my marketing performing?
Understanding what is actually happening and why is critical. This article focuses on getting a comprehensive view of how your website is performing and what to change to increase conversions once visitors get to your site.
Google Website Optimizer is great. It's a powerful tool for determining what kinds of changes to make to your site. Statistics-based recommendations are an analyst's dream.
The only drawback with GWO is that it's a binary measurement: did the visitor convert or not? Granted, you have some flexibility in defining what that "conversion" is, but it's still not a holistic view of what's really happening. You also have to predefine any measurements that an experiment may impact, and that's simply not possible in every scenario.
The solution to this is to use Google Analytics in conjunction with GWO.
Analyzing the keywords reports in Google Analytics can tell us a lot about the site and the visitors. We can see which sections of the site are most visible to search engines, and we can get a feel for what visitors are expecting when they come to the site.
The problem with keywords reports, though, is that they are so exhaustive. They include every single keyword that brought at least one visit. Every variation of misspelling of a phrase shows up as a separate keyword, even though it returns the same results. When you get into keywords that only brought one visit, it's difficult to discern what is meaningful and what is a statistical anomaly. The bounce rates, time on site and other statistics aren't very helpful at a micro level, because we can't usually extrapolate what to do at a macro level based on a single visit.
Today 
Many business are tapping into the value of social media. It operates unlike any other type of online marketing, and the rules are constantly shifting. With this shift in focus, web analytics vendors have started to announce partnerships or tools to integrate social media tracking into their product.
Web analytics software companies are still touting their (recent) ability to segment mobile traffic in reports. This is important primarily because people using mobile devices interact with sites differently than people using more conventional machines.
Understanding who your site visitors are is one of the most critical steps in optimizing your online presence. Google Analytics can help you to understand who your visitors are and what their expectations are. Yet, too often, companies focus exclusively on marketing or overall site performance, without taking the time to understand the types of people they are trying to interact with.
Advanced Segmentation is arguably the most powerful feature ever introduced to Google Analytics. It allows you to specify a set of criteria and view almost every standard report for just the visits that meet that definition without needing to reprocess data or wait for more data to fill in. New applications for Advanced Segments are still found everyday.
Google Website Optimizer is great. It's a powerful tool for determining what kinds of changes to make to your site. Statistics-based recommendations are an analyst's dream.
Analyzing the keywords reports in Google Analytics can tell us a lot about the site and the visitors. We can see which sections of the site are most visible to search engines, and we can get a feel for what visitors are expecting when they come to the site.
