WebProNews

Tag: analytics

  • Google Tag Manager Gets Built-In Templates For Popular Tags

    In October, Google announced the launch of Tag Manager, a tool for consolidating the various tags you use for your site into one snippet of code, and enabling you to manage them from a single interface.

    Google has now teamed up with a handful of companies to provide its “first wave” of Tag Vendor templates. Companies involved include: comScore (Unified Digital Measurement tag), Turn (Conversion Tracking and Data Collection tags), Media6Degrees (Universal tag), Bizo (Business Data Insight tag), and Neustar AdAdvisor.

    “One of our favorite features of Google Tag Manager is the ability to add new tags to your site using a tag template instead of copying-and-pasting code — and we’ve just made tagging even easier with several new built-in tag templates,” said Google Tag Manager product manager Laura Holmes. “Just add a few key details to the template, and Google Tag Manager will automatically generate the correct code.”

    Google says it will be adding more supported tags to the list, and is actually taking requests, so feel free to let them know what you want to see added.

  • Tumblr Announces Tumblr Analytics From Union Metrics Now Available

    After two months, Tumblr Analytics from Union Metrics is out of beta, and has launched with new features. Tumblr announced the news itself on Twitter, and Union Metrics says it is Tumblr’s preferred analytics provider.

    “We’ve added full ad-hoc date filtering, so you can drill into any date or date range from your Tracker’s history, and access to lists, so you can view (and sort) the full list of posts, contributors, curators and tags in the Tracker UI,” Union Metrics says in a blog post. “These are the first of many features to come that will make it even easier to pinpoint precisely how and where engagement happens on Tumblr for what ever your tracking.”

    “We love Tumblr and we especially love the diversity and creativity that goes into making it the wonderful place that it is,” the company adds. “And we know that not everyone works at a company with the budget for these plans. We’re working on more analytics offerings for everyone, including a version for anyone interested in measuring their personal blogs.”

    The offering provides insights into post and note volume, top contributors and curators, analysis of posts and tags, post engagement details, and trackers for monitoring Tumblr presence.

    The offering comes in Standard, Premium and Max plans. It’s $499 a month for Standard and $999 a month for Premium. You can contact Union Metrics for a quote on Max.

  • Google Analytics Gets Cost Data Import Tool

    Google announced that it has launched a Cost Data import tool for Google Analytics, so users can import cost data from any digital source, including paid search providers, affiliates, email, social and organic traffic. The tool is in public beta.

    Users can upload data by using a self-service API or solutions created by independent app providers like NEXT Analytics, AutomateAnalytics.com GA Data Uploader, ShufflePoint In2GA, or Analytics Canvas.

    The imported data can be viewed in a new report called Cost Analysis in Traffic Sources, and in the new Attribution Modeling Tool.

    “These reports show you how all your digital marketing channels are performing compared to each other, so you can make better decisions about your marketing programs,” says product manager Laura Holmes.

    Cost Data Import will roll out over the next month, the company says.

  • Google Real Time Analytics Gets Profile Support

    Google is rolling out Real Time support for profiles in Google Analytics. Data from the Real Time Analytics feature (launched last year in beta), will be profile specific and obey the filtering that you have set up on your own profile. Any user with access to a profile can view the associated real time reports.

    “When viewing your real time reports keep in mind these changes,” notes Linus Chou from the Google Analytics team. “If the numbers are lower than you are used to, check your filters to see what traffic is being excluded. And if you use real time for debugging, be sure to use an unfiltered report for that purpose.”

    “Real Time has always been great for rapid testing and debugging of your tracking code and now with profile support you can do the same when creating profile filters,” add Chou. “When you change the filters in your profile, you should see the effects in the real time reports within a couple of hours. We are working to make this even quicker going forward.”

    Profile support will be available for both web pages and App profiles, so users can see mobile SDK traffic in real time. The feature will be rolling out over the next couple weeks.

    On a related note, Google says it is seeing seven years worth of engagement with the Real Time Analytics feature every day.

  • YouTube Has New Analytics Features

    YouTube Has New Analytics Features

    YouTube is talking about some new analytics features it has rolled out recently, including “time watched” and “annotation” reporting.

    The “Views” report has been enhanced to show more time watched data .”Estimated minutes watched” can be seen from the Views report. Users can also choose other data options from the “Compare metric” drop-down.

    YouTube Analytics Views

    The beta version of the Annotations report lets you view data on the performance of video annotations, with additional insights on viewer click and close rates.

    Annotations Report

    YouTube has also brought back Date Slider, which lets you adjust the date range and see how videos performed for various time periods.

    “You can average data across time with rolling totals for 7- and 30-day totals. Instead of seeing changes in weekend traffic and other cyclical data, rolling totals will smooth the trends to help you see overall growth without the distracting spikes and dips,” says YouTube product manager Ted Hamilton.

    Additionally, the metadata section for videos and channels now instantly provides data like lifetime views and video duration, the video hovercard shows a thumbnail of a video and basic info when hovering over a video link, and Compare Metrics gives users more ways to compare trends and patterns across different metrics.

  • HootSuite Announces Webtrends Analytics Integration

    HootSuite, a social media management platform used by businesses and organizations to organize their social marketing, announced today that its enterprise customers will now be able to take advantage of Webtrends Analytics, which will be integrated into the HootSuite software. HootSuite stated that analytics reports can be automatically generated and customized to show the connections between social media messages and website conversion statistics. The new Webtrends features are free to HootSuite Enterprise and Webtrends Analytics On-Demand clients.

    “Every organization must continually evaluate and optimize the social media ROI of each department’s publishing and engagement efforts,” said Ryan Holmes, CEO of HootSuite. “For that you need measurement-driven management, and the HootSuite-Webtrends integration helps satisfy that need. This partnership is another example of HootSuite’s commitment to our clients’ success, and to providing the market-leading functionality that our Enterprise clients expect.”

    The Webtrends integration will be able to track which messages and keywords drive social media conversations, which social media accounts drive the most valuable traffic, and which social meda platforms provide the greatest return or engagement. HootSuite claims this type of information will allow organizations to modify and fine-tune their social media marketing in faster ways.

    HootSuite recently acquired rival social media marketing software company Seesmic. Since then, the company has integrated a real-time collaboration tool called HootSuite Conversations.

  • Google Analytics Gets Some Ecommerce Updates

    Google Analytics Gets Some Ecommerce Updates

    Google announced some updates it’s making to Google Analytics tracking code and processing, specifically related to ecommerce.

    “These changes will allow you to better filter, segment and categorize the revenue generating portion of your traffic,” says Google in a blog post.

    Users will now be able to utilize custom variables, and Google is expanding filters for ecommerce to support page titles, hostnames, request URIs and internal search terms. Before, ecommerce data didn’t respect profile filters for “page-level” data, Google points out.

    “Say you are tracking www.website.com and store.website.com,” the company explains. “In order to analyze store traffic separately you have created a duplicate profile with a filter that includes traffic to store.website.com only. Currently, ecommerce reports would include data across both store.website.com and website.com which is not working as expected. Following this change, ecommerce reports would respect the filter to only include data from store.website.com which we believe is the correct behavior.”

    Google notes that if you have profile filters for page level data, the change will mean ecommerce data is only included for the subset of your traffic you’re filtering for.

    The changes will roll out on Friday.

  • Twitter Adds Manually Promoted Tweets, Reporting to Self-Service Ad Platform

    Today, Twitter is announcing two new features to their self-service advertising platform for small businesses – one focuses on functionality and the other on analytics.

    First, Twitter now lets businesses have more control over which tweets you promote. Before, they only had the option to automatically promote their newest, most engaging tweets. Now, Twitter has put the decision in their hands with a manual selection option.

    From the Twitter Advertising blog:

    Many advertisers have requested more control over which Tweets are promoted in order to be able to market a specific product, promotion or event. That’s why we’re now offering manual selection of Tweets in addition to automatic selection of your most engaging Tweets. If you choose the manual option, you can select a few Tweets for promotion or even tweet from within the interface. Remember to add new Tweets every couple of days to keep users engaged with fresh content.

    That’s a pretty good update for small businesses. It allows for more precise targeting of products, exactly when the marketer wants it.

    The second new feature is promoted account reporting. Part of Twitter’s self-service advertising platform allows for the promotion of entire accounts in order for businesses to get their names out there. Now, they can see exactly how it’s working. The new chart will track paid and unpaid followers side by side:

  • Wolfram Alpha Shows You A Whole Lot Of Personalized Facebook Data

    Wolfram Alpha announced the launch of a pretty cool new personal Facebook analytics tool. All you have to do is type “facebook report” into Wolfram Alpha. Just click the button that says “Analyze my Facebook data,” allow it to access your data, and bam. Tons of personalized data about your Facebook universe.

    At least that’s how it’s supposed to work. For me, it’s just timing out. Perhaps too many people are trying to do it at the moment.

    From there, Wolfram will give you your birthday, age (to the day), and your next birthday (how many months and days you have to go until your next one), your friends hometowns broken down by geography, your friends’ age distribution, the weather at your birth, zodiac signs, and all kinds of stuff.

    “When you type “’facebook report’, Wolfram|Alpha generates a pretty seriously long report—almost a small book about you, with more than a dozen major chapters, broken into more than 60 sections, with all sorts of drill-downs, alternate views, etc.,” says Wolfram Alpha creator Stephen Wolfram.

    Wolfram Facebook Analytics

    It shows you your numbers for posted links, uploaded photos, status, uploadd videos, the weekly distribution of all of these updates, when your most active days and times are, your most liked post, a word cloud made from your posts, various analysis of check-ins, photos, responses to posts, gender distribution among your friends, distribution of your friends’ relationship statuses, how common specific names are among your friends, etc. Really, just a ridiculous amount of data.

    “Of course most people haven’t been doing the kind of data collecting that I’ve been doing for the past couple of decades,” says Wolfram. “But these days a lot of people do have a rich source of data about themselves: their Facebook histories.”

    This, perhaps even more than Facebook’s Timeline itself, really illustrates just how true that is.

  • Google Analytics Gets New Shortcuts

    Google announced the launch of Shortcuts in Google Analytics. These, as Google explains, are designed to get your the exact view you want of your data in “record time.”

    Google is all about speeding things up, and this should help out in the GA department.

    “Rather than having to go through the ‘find report, add segment, change, sort’ process daily, with Shortcuts you can do it once, save it, and come back to it in a single click,” says Andrew Seguin from Google’s Analytics team.

    The shortcuts will save standard or custom reports for context, the currently viewed tab on the report, sort order, advanced segments and graphed metric. They will not, however, save date ranges or sample sizes. Google says this is because they’re dependent on the data you’re looking at. If you need to save something to the shortcut, just make sure you click save from the utility bar.

    Google Analytics Shortcuts

    To set up a shortcut, click the “Shortcut” button, which appears on standard or custom report pages, in the utility bar. Name the shortcut, and it will take you to a new “Shortcuts” section in the “Home” tab. You can visit this section anytime from Google Analytics to quickly get to the reports you want to look at, with minimal hassle.

    Shortcuts

    Well done, Google. Although personally, I’d like to see the option from the realtime overview page.

    It’s worth noting that shortcuts can be emailed and exported, just like any other standard report. Shortcuts apply at the profile level.

  • Rand Fishkin Talks Twitter’s Impact On SEO

    Rand Fishkin Talks Twitter’s Impact On SEO

    As previously reported SEOmoz has acquired Twitter analytics company Followerwonk. CEO Rand Fishkin said in a blog post announcing the deal that the companies have actually been working together since June.

    Followerwonk is a tool designed to help users find, analyze and optimize for “social growth,” and that means digging into Twitter analytics (who your followers are, where they’re located, when they tweet, etc.), and finding and connecting with influencers. Fishkin sees an opportunity to bring his SEO-savvy customers this kind of data, which can help them in their SEO endeavors, which are obviously not getting any easier these days.

    “I see Twitter impacting a lot of relationship building, which often leads to partnerships, links, referrals, and business development of all kinds,” Fishkin tells WebProNews. “We’re also seeing a very observable correlation directly between URLs/sites that are heavily mentioned on Twitter and enhanced performance in the search results.”

    “Whether that’s a direct or indirect results is harder to know, but plenty of examples and evidence certainly exist,” he adds.

    Google’s Matt Cutts actually talked a bit about social signals at the Search Engine Strategies conference in San Francsico this week. He briefly touched on Google’s relationship with Twitter data, since the deal the two companies once had fell apart last year.

    According to a paraphrased account of the conversation from Brafton, Cutts noted that Google can’t crawl Facebook pages or Twitter accounts to see who is reputable or has real world impact as a brand. Brafton’s account of Cutts’ words continues:

    People were upset when Realtime results went away! But that platform is a private service. If Twitter wants to suspend someone’s service they can. Google was able to crawl Twitter until its deal ended, and Google was no longer able to crawl those pages. As such, Google is cautious about using that as a signal – Twitter can shut it off at any time.

    We’re always going to be looking for ways to identify who is valuable in the real world. We want to return quality results that have real world reputability and quality factors are key – Google indexes 20 billion pages per day.

    SEOmoz may just be able to help users identify who is valuable in the real world, using Twitter data, thanks to its new acquisition. Fishkin noted in his announcement, by the way, that they may add Google+ and/or Pinterest data into the mix at some point.

  • SEOmoz Acquires Twitter Analytics Company Followerwonk

    SEOmoz announced that it has acquired Twitter Analytics company FollowerWonk.

    “In true Moz style, the ‘Wonkers’ will become ‘Mozzers’ which will allow SEOMoz to expand its current capabilities to include a social aspect, helping customers search Twitter profiles, compare two users, and analyze them using comprehensive graphs,” a representative for SEOmoz tells WebProNews.

    Earlier this year, SEOmoz secured $18 million in funding from The Foundry Group and Ignition Partners. CEO Rand Fishkin says he reached out to Followerwonk CEO Peter Bray shortly thereafter, and discussed a possible acquisition. It turns out, the two companies have been working together since June, and have been working on integration of Followerwonk into SEOmoz Pro.

    “Normally, I like to be wholly transparent about everything we do here at SEOmoz, and that would include acquisitions,” says Fishkin. “However, in this case, I can’t reveal all the details around the transaction. In being empathetic to the Followerwonk crew’s personal finances, the best I can say is that the total deal value is in the low 7 figures (between 1mm and 4mm) and that it includes three items – cash upfront, ongoing cash incentives for the years the Wonk crew stay at Moz, and SEOmoz stock.”

    Fishkin hints that more acquisitions are in the company’s future. He also hints that Followerwonk may expand to include Google+ and/or Pinterest data.

  • Today Is Your Last Day to Use the Old Version of Google Analytics

    Stubborn hold-outs, your time has come. Starting tomorrow, you’re going to have to use the new version on Google Analytics.

    That’s because Google announced today that they are officially retiring the old version. To be fair the Google, they did give site owners over a year to make the transition. Plus, you should be using the new version anyway as it is about one gazillion times better.

    Mostly becuase the new version of Google Analytics sports Real-Time reporting. With Real-Time, you can see your site activity right as it happens – page views per second, sources, and current active visitors.

    That means that you’ll no longer see this link at the bottom of your screen, allowing you to view Analytics through the old lens:

    Google analytics old version link

    In a blog post, the Google Analytics team reminds you why you should be happy to switch over to the new version:

    • Multi-Channel Funnels provides insight on the full path to conversion over a 30 day period. The variety of marketing channels used to find your website, and not simply the last click, so you can make better decisions on your marketing investments.
    • Social Reports help you measure the impact of your social marketing initiatives and evaluate the effect social media has on the metrics which matter to your business.
    • Mobile Reports show how visitors from mobile devices and AdWords mobile campaigns engage with your website. See how many pages they visit, how much time they spend, as well as conversion and ecommerce insights to help you optimize your mobile strategies.
    • Content Experiments enables you to show different versions of a page to different visitors, then using a new advanced statistical engine measures the results of each to determine which is the most effective version.

    Change is good, guys.

  • Google Adds A New Kind Of Referrer For Ad Clicks

    Google announced today that it’s making a change to how some clicks coming from Google appear in traffic logs and web analytics software, though Google Analytics itself will not be affected by the change.

    There are now three possible referrers.

    Referrers for clicks on ads for a term like “shoes,” have, until now, looked like either:

    http://www.google.com/search?…&q=shoes&…

    or

    http://www.google.com/aclk?…&q=shoes&…

    Now, they may also look like:

    http://www.googleadservices.com/pagead/aclk?…&q=shoes&…&ohost=www.google.com&…

    The new referrer is on a different domain, and has a new path.

    “We’re making this change because we’re trying to improve the experience of clicking on an ad for our users,” says Ali Mohammad with Google’s Ads Latency Team. “For historical reasons, Google currently uses two redirects on two different domains for many of the ads on our site. We are streamlining our infrastructure to remove one of these redirects, which brings users to ad landing pages faster, leading to a better user experience for our users and a better return on ad clicks for our advertisers.”

    “The new referrer format ensures that advertisers will still get the relevant bits of information about a search that drove traffic to their site, but without the extra redirect,” Mohammad adds.

    Google says it will keep the number of affected searches low throughout the next month, but will move to all queries in August.

  • New Compete Data: Top Business And Tech Sites

    Compete has released its new analytics numbers for May. Following is a list of some of the web’s popular destinations for tech, business, search and social media news, and what Compete lists as their unique monthly visitors (US Only).

    This is not a complete list of all publications covering these areas. Still, while some may cover other areas of interest, each is rooted in one of them primarily. The list doesn’t include the more general news sites, such as The AP, Reuters, The New York Times, etc., many of which do cover these areas extensively as part of their overall products. The list is not meant to be the state of the news industry or anything, but just a quick look at our industry’s unique audience landscape. Not all of these sites are necessarily in direct competition with one another. Some are much more niche than others. It’s not about comparing a site that only writes about Facebook, for example, with a site that covers the entire tech industry (or even more than that).

    I’ve included a few popular sources of such types of news, which are more aggregators than publications, yet seemed worth including for perspective.

    It’s also worth noting that Compete’s numbers are just that – Compete’s numbers. They’re often much lower than what sites’ internal analytics will reveal, and will differ from those of other products.

    Finally, I want to stress again, that these are unique visitors. Not pageviews. If we were talking pageviews, the list would no doubt look much different. For example, Reddit announced earlier this year that it hit the 2 billion mark.

    But anyhow, on with the list:

    Website Unique Visitors (U.S.)
    CNET.com 13,486,109
    Forbes.com 9,449,089
    WSJ.com 5,969,016
    Bloomberg.com 5,036,418
    BusinessWeek.com 3,192,967
    BusinessInsider.com 2,681,606
    Mashable.com 2,244,083
    WebProNews.com 2,239,178
    PCWorld.com 1,930,292
    BizJournals.com 1,827,123
    Reddit.com 1,684,897
    TechCrunch.com 1,660,121
    PCMag.com 1,586,938
    Gizmodo.com 1,511,785
    Wired.com 1,505,012
    Engadget.com 1,067,846
    MacRumors.com 780,441
    ZDNet.com 717,523
    TechTarget.com 765,059
    DigitalTrends.com 684,963
    Economist.com 576,800
    Entrepreneur.com 551,489
    Inc.com 550,359
    FastCompany.com 530,499
    ComputerWorld.com 522,378
    ArsTechnica.com 424,854
    MacWorld.com 382,234
    SlashGear.com 356,398
    TheVerge.com 354,331
    Geek.com 330,427
    ReadWriteWeb.com 309,871
    VentureBeat.com 304,361
    MarketingPilgrim.com 251,146
    AllThingsD.com 227,963
    Slashdot.org 223,023
    TorrentFreak.com 222,383
    GigaOm.com 219,288
    TechnologyReview.com 200,324
    BGR.com 182,691
    SERoundtable.com 176,793
    SearchEngineLand.com 170,178
    AdAge.com 151,725
    TheNextWeb.com 150,228
    AppleInsider.com 136,356
    TechDirt.com 136,015
    SearchEngineWatch.com 120,709
    AllFacebook.com 116,388
    9to5Mac.com 105,323
    PaidContent.org 82,786
    PandoDaily.com 82,687
    ClickZ.com 69,098
    InsideFacebook.com 56,379
    MarketingLand.com 54,748
    GeekWire.com 53,169
    Electronista.com 52,336
    Techmeme.com 42,930
    SearchEngineJournal.com 24,771
    DaringFireball.net 24,045
    9to5Google.com 8,182
    Betakit.com 6,928

    Compete lets you look at the data for any domain free of charge here, though they do require a sign-up these days.

  • Yahoo Drops Analytics-Only Customers

    Yahoo announced some changes to Yahoo Web Analytics. Specifically, it is discontinuing services for analytics-only customers and the Yahoo Web Analytics Consultant Network.

    “In 2008, Yahoo! acquired IndexTools to offer web analytics and deep insights for small-and-medium business customers leveraging the Yahoo! Store platform to effectively sell goods and services online,” writes Yahoo’s Emer Kirrane on the Yahoo Web Analytics Blog. “While this one-click integration with Yahoo! Web Analytics proved to be very popular, with more than 80 percent of Yahoo! Stores using the platform to optimize their online presence, we’re committed to continuously measure and scrutinize what’s working and what can be improved.”

    “We will continue to support this community of Yahoo! Store customers and a limited number of other customers (e.g., Right Media Exchange seat holders) with the same Yahoo! Web Analytics services they know and trust,” says Kirrane.

    Daniel Waisberg points to some research from CardinalPath, indicating that Yahoo Web Analytics was only used by 3% of the top 500 retail sites (as of last October). That’s compared to 64% for Google, 33% for Adobe and 19% for IBM.

    CardinalPath data on analytics

    Existing Web Analytics projects will become read-only starting at the end of August. They will still provide access to historical data for two months.

    Yahoo suggests removing YWA tags from your site, as they’ll no longer populate data to your YWA account.

    There’s a data export feature, for those who wish to retain historical data. Users will have until the end of October before all Yahoo Web Analytics projects scheduled for discontinuation will be shut down.

  • Mad Men Gives Jaguar A Coastal Google Search Bump

    [WARNING: Mad Men Season 5 spoilers ahead]

    This season of AMC’s Mad Men has been thrilling, poignant, heartbreaking, surprising, and might possibly have catapulted the show back into the title of “Best on TV” (apologies to Game of Thrones). Each episode has been masterful, reigniting the week-to-week excitement that I (and many others) haven’t felt since season one.

    And all of that excitement means that the brands featured in the show have the opportunity to see a spike in interest. After all, it is a show about advertising (among other things, of course). And what could be better advertising for a product than to be featured in Mad Men?

    Even if the product is portrayed in a negative light, it can still generate buzz. In the case of Jaguar, there’s no telling exactly why people took to Google to seek information, but they did – in droves.

    Google Auto
    @GoogleAuto     Looks like @JaguarUSA experienced a Mad Men search spike, mostly in New York and California: http://t.co/HvUx2Agz
    1 hour ago via HootSuite · powered by @socialditto
     Reply  · Retweet  · Favorite

    A quick look at the search data confirms this. The big spike you see is on Monday, May 28th, the day after Sunday’s Mad Men episode featured the car company. The search spike occurred mostly in California, New York, Texas, and Florida:

    Mad Men Jaguar Google Spike

    Like I said before, Jaguar hasn’t been receiving all positive press from Mad Men. Although the company has been portrayed as creating a car that’s sexy (like a mistress), Jaguar cars have also been called impractical and their reliability has been questioned. There’s also that sleazy part about a Jaguar exec demanding sex from buxom beauty Joan in order to sign off on Sterling, Draper, Cooper, Price’s representation.

    Jaguar USA has been following along with the show on Twitter:

    Jaguar USA
    @JaguarUSA     Loved the pitch, didn’t love the process. We applaud Peggy leaving SCDP. #MadMen #MadJag
    8 days ago via web · powered by @socialditto
     Reply  · Retweet  · Favorite

    And about that amazing scene where Lane Price attempts to commit suicide inside his new Jaguar but the car won’t start? Jaguar’s North American VP of Marketing had this to say about it:

    As soon as we see the tailpipe with cloth in it, we know this is going to be bad. “It won’t START. The car won’t start!” We have never been so happy to see our car not start. How weird is this? Maybe he doesn’t know how to use the choke?”

    But despite some of the more negative aspects of Jaguar’s image on the show, Google searches show that it got people interested.

    And this season of Mad Men didn’t just give Jaguar a boost, but another one of their clients saw a spike in searches as well. Earlier episodes featured pitches involving Heinz Baked Beans, a search term that saw some major spikes on, you guessed it, Mondays following Mad Men episodes. It’s fitting that the search popularity spike the most in the U.K., where 2.3 million Brits eat Heinz Bean(z) every day.

    Check out Don Draper pitch Jaguar below:

  • Google Analytics Switching Over To Core Reporting API Next Week

    If you’re a user of Google Analytics, then no doubt you’re familiar with the Data Export API. You are also probably aware that Google replaced the Data Export API with the Core Reporting API in December of last year. Google gave developers six months to switch over to the new API and those six months are just about up.

    Google announced today that the Data Export API in Google Analytics will start the process of being shut down next week. If you have an app that uses the outdated API, it’s suggested that you switch over to the new Core Reporting API. If not, your app will “experience service outages.”

    The “service outages” will be caused by Google redirecting Data Export API requests over to the Core Reporting API. This is all part of the process of taking the Data Export API out back. It will be finally laid to rest on July 10. During the next month, you should start seeing Data Feed requests returning Core Reporting API responses.

    Back when Google first announced the Core Reporting API, they had prepared two versions for developers. One was version 3.0 which is an entirely brand new API that supports all kinds of nifty new client libraries like PHP, Ruby, Python, JavaScript and Java. You’re probably going to want to build a new app using this API because it’s the only version that’s going to get new features.

    Some people don’t like change and actively avoid it whenever possible. For those people, Google has also released version 2.4 of the Core Reporting API. It’s backwards compatible with Data Export 2.3 and won’t cause any conflicts once the change occurs.

    Since most sensible people will be starting with version 3.0 and going from there, Google has created a nice developer guidel. It contains sample code from the major client libraries that the Core Reporting API supports.

    If you’re new to the Analytics API in general, Google has also created a dedicated tutorial to show budding developers how to take advantage of Analytics. It’s pretty in-depth so it should set you up with all the knowledge you need to start building applications that use the Analytics API.

  • Google Analytics Social Reports Move To Traffic Sources

    Google recently announced some new social reports, and now the company has announced that it’s consolidated the locations of social reports in general.

    Specifically, the Social Engagement, Social Actions, and Social Pages reports, which were previously listed in the Audience section, can now be found in the Social section under Traffic Sources.

    Social Plugins Report

    “Users now have access to both onsite behavior, the existing data, and off-site social activities of partners such as Google+, Digg, and Reddit among others,” says Linus Chou of Google’s Anaytics Team. “Below is a summary of how to access the data from the old reports in the new ones.”

    “To access onsite activities use the Traffic Sources -> Social -> Social Plugins report,” explains Chou. “Here you see the social activities broken down by content. Selecting a specific page shows you the social activities by network for that page. Click the ‘Social Source and action’ tab highlighted in the screenshot below to see a breakdown of the itemized activities.”

    Last week, Google launched a Google Analytics page on Google+. Here are a couple of the most recent updates:

    Google Analytics
    Google Analytics   25 minutes ago All types of organizations, including non-profits, greatly benefit from effective use of analytics. Learn more about how +PBS and +SFMOMA (San Francisco Museum of Modern Art) use analytics to improve their results. 3   0 Powered by socialditto

    Google Analytics
    Google Analytics   23 hours ago "The big question remains however: What is the value of all that [social] activity? While reporting number of tweets and retweets are fine measures, you can go further in your measurement analysis and connect your social activity with your website activity." 3   0 Powered by socialditto

    The first links to this blog post, and the second links to this Likeable article.

  • Facebook Adds New Analytics Tool for Brands

    Facebook stock, as of now, sits at $33.03, and some speculate that there truly is no limit on how low it can go. One of several factors that might’ve contributed to the sensational IPO’s less than stellar performance is a possible fear regarding the company’s future, especially since the mobile version of the site, which more and more users are accessing, offers even less ad content than the desktop version. Some have even speculated that Facebook was aware of this, and may have issued a reduced earnings guidance on the eve of its IPO, which is a company’s forecast of how good business will be in the future. Either way, Facebook stock has essentially tanked, and the social network is scrambling to figure out how to make more money from ads, especially after GM discontinuing their campaign with the company, which made headlines.

    Yesterday, the social network made a change which allowed advertisers to bypass Facebook sales reps while purchasing ads – Facebook home page and news feed ad space can directly be set up through Ads API and Power Editor tools, without having to consult with a Facebook ad representative. The platform continues to roll out new features related to ad content sans any official announcements, most recently adding a tab that displays the percentage of brand page fans who were reached as well as ‘liked’ posts. Here are some screen grabs of these new feature:

    fb ads

    fb ads

    Page owners now have an extra analytical tool to get a better handle on how well their brand is doing on the social network. Facebook told Mashable that the new feature is available for the old-style pages, as well as the newer timelines, but adds that “we are slowly rolling this back to Page owners with a slightly updated design.” It can be assumed that the “updated design” is the timeline, which seems to be slowly be taking over the entire site.

  • Dear Twitter Analytics…You’re Late

    We were first given a glimpse of what Twitter Analytics would look like in late 2010 and told that they would be released by the end of the year. Well, that time frame passed and still no native Twitter Analytics. No problem, things happen.

    However, nine months deep into 2011, the Twitter Developers blog gave us a glimpse of the new and improved Twitter Analytics. In addition to a good looking layout, and what appeared to be tracking of not only your account but Tweet button stats and API access as well, it looked promising. The post stated that these analytics would be rolling out to everyone “within the next few weeks.” Hmm…2011 came and went and still no native Twitter Analytics.

    Now here we are, five months into 2012 and the only word we have about Twitter analytics is that, “it’s taking longer than originally planned to ready for wider use.” Meanwhile both Facebook and YouTube have completely revamped their analytics platforms and delivered deeper insights into the activity on their platforms. This is officially ridiculous.

    If history is any indicator, 2012 is going to be gone in the blink of an eye without a real analytics release as well. You would think with all of the acquisitions and rounds of funding Twitter has executed over the last two to three years that they would have found, acquired, or hired someone who could have delivered on this vitally essential feature of any modern social platform.

    Why it’s taking Twitter so long to catch up to its rivals, I have no idea. However it’s no secret that Twitter needs to find more revenue streams, and this could be one. By charging a nominal fee to people and brands that care about the analytics, they could start bringing in multiple, small streams of revenue.

    What’s so difficult about this? Other platforms, which are far more comprehensive than Twitter, have had at least basic analytics for years. This isn’t rocket science… is it?

    So, even though there are no signs of Twitter ever getting their act together and giving us marketers a native analytics platform to work from, there are options available. Thanks to Twitter’s mostly open API, there are several sites out there that will help you monitor and analyze the progress of both you and your competitors’ Twitter efforts.

    1. Manual Tracking
    Setup a spreadsheet and track all of the metrics applicable to your brand. RT’s, Mentions, Followers, Following, Lists, etc. If it’s important, track it. Just be sure to update it weekly so that it doesn’t become an unmanageable amount of data.

    Pro Tip: Updating weekly spreadsheets is a great task to delegate to interns to familiarize them with the platform and progress tracking.

    2. Topsy
    Track mentions of yourself and two competitors for up to 30 days and see the top links for the past 24 hours. If you’re prepared to do some manual tracking, you can use Topsy to look at domains, keywords, brand names, hashtags, etc. and track the results.

    Pro Tip: Topsy is a great supplement to any manual spreadsheet data aggregation.

    3. Twitter Counter
    Compare up to three brands side by side. Under the free plan you can monitor Followers, Following, Tweets, and a mix of Tweets and Followers for the past three months. If you upgrade to a paid option, it includes Mentions, ReTweets, Your Retweet, and Your Mentions, and can go as far back as six months.

    Pro Tip: This tool is great for researching competitors and tracking your own progress.

    4. TweetStats
    Get your Tweet Timeline and see what month, day, and time the account is most active. TweetStats collects information on daily tweets, hourly tweets, replies, RTs, Friend and Followers stats, and even see what interface(s) were used to tweet. It’s also possible to create a word cloud comprised of the most used terms and hashtags by the account.

    Pro Tip: In addition to account stats, you can pull current stats on Twitter for wide trends and platform usage!

    5. Xefer
    Xefer will provide very simple analytics. It will show you some stats for around the last eight months or so, depending on the activity level of the account. It breaks tweets down into the time of day and day of the week so you can see the timing and volume of interaction. Also included on the page is a reply explorer so you can see high engagement users and view those conversations.

    6. The Archivist
    Look at Tweet volume, top users, tweet vs retweet, top words, top URLs, and platform. Each of these graphs can be expanded to show more detail. Below the graphs is a stream updated with mentions of the account. It’s a good way to get a quick snapshot of an account or topic and gage the relative health of the account.

    7. MentionMap
    See who and what a user mentions the most and follow the trail to see how topics and people are connected. You can map the activity of your account and the hashtags associated with campaigns or promotions.

    8. TwentyFeet
    Track a variety of details about your Twitter account and even competitors. TwentyFeet uses publicly available data and private data (after you authorize it) to find reputation indicators, influence indicators, conversations, following analysis, and more.

    Pro Tip: You can also add Facebook, YouTube, Bit.ly, MySpace, and Google Analytics accounts to be tracked.

    9. Export.ly
    Export.ly serves up a polished report that you can export to Excel or Powerpoint. It’s free with a Tweet so long as the account you’re looking at is under 10,000 followers. Above that you’ll need a Simply Measured account to access the report. You can also get detailed reports for Facebook and Google Analytics.

    Pro Tip: Exporting the report to Excel makes it easy to tailor the presentation with your own company colors and deliver a great looking report.

    10. SMMS analytics
    Many SMMS platforms (Social Media Management Systems) have analytics built into them. Check out platforms like Hootsuite, Shoutlet, Sprout Social, Argyle, and others. Not only do they allow you to interact and post directly from the platforms, but will track your progress and allow you to pull reports from their platforms.