Tag: google analytics

Norway On the Verge of Banning Google Analytics

Norway may soon join the list of EU countries banning Google Analytics following an initial conclusion that it violates the GDPR.

Google Analytics has increasingly come under fire by EU jurisdictions, accused of violating European data protection laws, specifically the GDPR. According to Simple Analytics, the Norwegian data protection authority (Datatilsynet) has issued a preliminary decision that “the use of Google Analytics was in violation of the GDPR’s transfer rules.”

At the heart of the issue is a 2020 EU ruling that US cloud providers are not in compliance with the GDPR. There have long been concerns regarding the transmission of EU user data to US cloud providers, especially given US cloud providers’ obligation to assist US intelligence agencies.

When Austria became one of the first jurisdictions to issue an adverse ruling against Google Analytics, Max Schrems, honorary chair of The European Center for Digital Rights (noyb), predicted it would simply be the first of many such rulings.

“We expect similar decisions to now drop gradually in most EU member states,” Schrems said. “We have filed 101 complaints in almost all Member States and the authorities coordinated the response. A similar decision was also issued by the European Data Protection Supervisor last week.

“This is a very detailed and sound decision,” Schrems continued. “The bottom line is: Companies can’t use US cloud services in Europe anymore. It has now been 1.5 years since the Court of Justice confirmed this a second time, so it is more than time that the law is also enforced.”

As Simple Analytics points out, it is possible — although unlikely — that Norway’s final conclusion will differ from its initial conclusion. If Norway’s final decision is in line with its preliminary one, it will join Austria, Denmark, Finland, France, and Italy, all of whom have ruled against Google.

March 6, 2023
France Warns Companies Over Google Analytics Use

Companies in France are being warned that default use of Google Analytics is illegal over concerns of data transfer between the EU and US.

France’s National Commission for Informatics and Liberties (CNIL) ordered a website to stop using Google Analytics in February over data privacy concerns. The CNIL has now issued updated guidance that deems the default use of Google Analytics illegal.

Unlike the US, the EU has comprehensive privacy legislation in the form of the GDPR. A 2020 EU court ruling established that US cloud providers do not meet GDPR requirements. In particular, there is concern over US cloud providers being forced to work with intelligence agencies and hand over customer data to them.

By default, Google Analytics shares customer data, transferring it from the EU to the US. This gives Google access to the data, and is therefore in breach of the GDPR. The CNIL has already sent out notices to some organizations, but is warning all to make changes as soon as possible. Those changes can include modifying how Google Analytics works, so it does not export data to the US, or stop its use altogether.

Below is a statement from the CNIL website [translated]:

“Organizations given formal notice have a period of one month to comply and justify this compliance to the CNIL. This one-month period may be renewed, at the request of the organizations concerned.

“All data controllers using Google Analytics in a similar way to these organizations must now consider this use as illegal under the GDPR.”

June 8, 2022
Google Analytics 4: What You Should Know

Data analysis services like Google Analytics are critical for millions of businesses worldwide to understand their customers. It’s also a lucrative industry; by 2028, the data analytics market is expected to be worth $550 billion. The field has come a long way since the early days of the internet.

The History of Web Analytics

Web analytics is almost as old as the internet itself. Just 3 years after the internet came into existence, hit counters became available for use. Hit counters are familiar features to most internet users. They consist of simple code that displays the number of page views. Hit counters can be used without any kind of IT expertise.

Slightly more complicated is log analysis, which helps people interpret server logs and identify traffic sources to their website. Yet as websites morphed from plain text to images, audio, and video, log analysis developed gaps in its data. That’s because caching, or temporarily storing a file in the system to avoid multiple HTTP requests was a common occurrence that wouldn’t show up on the log. Eventually, the gap was filled by JavaScript, which followed user behavior using a tag-based system. JavaScript could track more than just hits, which moved analytics into the field of marketing.

The Dawn of Google Analytics

By this point, marketers were able to create targeted advertisements, optimize website copy, and more. Yet there were limits; in the late ‘90s, large companies could take as long as 24 hours to process their website’s data. Along came Urchin, a web analytics company that could process the same data in as little as 15 minutes. At one point, Urchin worked with 1 in 5 of the Fortune 500. Urchin continued its upward trend until Google bought them in 2005 for $30 million, giving birth to Google Analytics.

Google Analytics is a service that ties in directly with Google’s web marketing offerings. They offer in-depth, tag-based data that focuses on the quantitative side. For the past decade, their most popular offering has been Universal Analytics, which launched in 2012. Universal Analytics lived up to its name by enabling the tracking of users across multiple devices and platforms. It can monitor offline behavior, and it combines demographic data with real-time monitoring for the most detailed consumer insights possible.

Google Analytics 4 is Coming

The expansive reach of Universal Analytics made it one of the targets of certain governments as they passed online privacy laws. One of the most well known laws of this nature is the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR for short. In part as a response to the new regulatory environment, Google launched Google Analytics 4 (GA4) in October 2020. GA4 is in compliance with the GDPR in that it only uses first-party cookies and has a Consent Mode that adjusts data collected on users based on said user’s permissions. At the same time, GA4 has all the insight capacity of its predecessor.

In Conclusion

GA4 has added new features like debugging mode, consistent collection methods for mobile and web data, and cross-platform reporting opportunities. Is your website ready to switch?

Source: InfoTrust

June 7, 2022
France the Latest Country to Crack Down on Google Analytics

France is the latest country to crack down on Google Analytics, over concerns it violates the GDPR the EU’s privacy legislation.

In mid-January, the Austrian Data Protection Authority ruled that Google Analytics was illegal due to conflicts with the GDPR. Essentially, the GDPR prohibits countries from exporting EU citizen data to the US. Much of the concern stems from the fact that US intelligence agencies can force companies to give them access to such data, without the protections EU citizens are normally afforded.

France has now joined Austria, according to Le Monde, via AppleInsider. The National Commission for Informatics and Liberties (CNIL) has ordered a company to stop using Google Analytics.

“The CNIL notes that Internet users’ data [collected by Google Analytics] are transferred to the United States in violation of…GDPR,” reads the statement Le Monde gained access to. “It therefore requires the site manager to bring these processing into compliance with the GDPR, if necessary by ceasing to use the Google Analytics feature (under current conditions) or by using a tool that does not result in a transfer outside the EU.”

The CNIL has given the site manager one month to stop using Google’s platform. This latest development does not bode well for Google. When Austria made its ruling, experts believed other countries would soon follow suit. Austria and France are likely just the first elements of what may become a wave of losses for the Google Analytics platform.

National Commission for Informatics and Liberties (CNIL) has issued a formal statement regarding the unnamed company. “The site manager has one month to comply,” says the statement (in translation), as seen by Le Monde.

“The CNIL notes that Internet users’ data [collected by Google Analytics] are transferred to the United States in violation of…GDPR,” continues the statement. “It therefore requires the site manager to bring these processing into compliance with the GDPR, if necessary by ceasing to use the Google Analytics feature (under current conditions) or by using a tool that does not result in a transfer outside the EU.”

February 14, 2022
Google Analytics Is Illegal in Austria, Violates the GDPR

In what may be the first of many such rulings, Austria has ruled that Google Analytics violates the GDPR and is therefore illegal.

Google Analytics is the premier tool available to website operators to gauge their traffic, and better understand how they’re engaging with visitors. Unfortunately for Google, Google Analytics seems to run afoul of the GDPR, the EU’s privacy legislation.

The issue is the result of a 2020 EU ruling that using US cloud providers violates the GDPR. Because US cloud providers are legally compelled to help US intelligence agencies, they were deemed inherently incapable of being GDPR-compliant. As a result, data on EU citizens could no longer be sent to US companies as freely as it once was. Google Analytics runs afoul of this law because it transmits user IP addresses and other identifiable information to the US.

Unfortunately for users’ privacy, many companies — both in the US and EU — are choosing to ignore the law and continue with business as usual. The European Center for Digital Rights (noyb) has filed 101 cases against such companies, and the Austrian Data Protection Authority (“Datenschutzbehörde” or “DSB”) has ruled on one of them, concluding that Google Analytics is illegal.

EU authorities have been cooperating on such cases, acting as a task force, making it likely that Austria’s ruling is just the first of many that will soon be handed down.

“We expect similar decisions to now drop gradually in most EU member states,” said Max Schrems, honorary chair of noyb.eu. “We have filed 101 complaints in almost all Member States and the authorities coordinated the response. A similar decision was also issued by the European Data Protection Supervisor last week.

“This is a very detailed and sound decision,” Schrems continued. “The bottom line is: Companies can’t use US cloud services in Europe anymore. It has now been 1.5 years since the Court of Justice confirmed this a second time, so it is more than time that the law is also enforced.”

Schrems also highlighted the need for the US to adopt its own data protection laws, something prominent US executives have also advocated for, lest platforms and services be splintered.

“In the long run we either need proper protections in the US, or we will end up with separate products for the US and the EU,” Schrems noted. “I would personally prefer better protections in the US, but this is up to the US legislator – not to anyone in Europe.”

January 20, 2022
How Data Analytics Empowers Businesses

Many know that data is the most precious resource of the modern world. What many don’t know is how to refine data into its most valuable form. Is your company using all the data your analytics tools tell you about? Most likely it is not; under a quarter of executives have created a data-driven organization successfully. These companies excel in their fields.

If letting data drive the company is a surefire path to success, why don’t more businesses do it? The truth is that they may be facing a variety of challenges. The first is an unclear vision: 70% of executives don’t have a clearly defined strategy in the data realm. Some executives refuse to let data drive their decisions at all. Without clear and effective support from the top, workers struggle to carry out a successful data mission. Only 21% of workers believe they have strong data literacy skills, and a majority of companies struggle to hire and retain data analytics professionals. Deficiency in leadership and resources come together to set companies down the wrong path. As a result, over 70% of all data within an enterprise may never be analyzed. What is the use of collecting data that never sees the light of day?

Data Analytics Can Change the Game

As alluded to before, data analytics has the power to determine a company’s fate. Data driven organizations are 178% more likely to outperform competitors in terms of revenue and profitability. With a solid understanding of purpose, support from partners, and the right tools and processes in place, companies can see their world more clearly. They can identify potential risks and opportunities for expansion in the same venture. They can develop product innovations and marketing strategies guided by the same principle. Even a company’s external affairs (relationships with suppliers and customers) improves when data lights the way.

Meanwhile, a company lacking proper data quality or analysis suffers. These businesses see with clouded eyes, leading to misguided business strategies and missed opportunities. They see less productivity or growth as a result of their poor decision making. Altogether, poor data quality leads to an average of $15 million in annual losses.

If you’re concerned about your business’s current standing on the data front, here are a few diagnostic questions to ask. Do you have an objective metric by which to measure progress or success? Does the data your company receives come with any visualization? Does waiting on data ever slow down important business processes? If you find the answers to these questions unsatisfactory, your business probably needs help with data analytics.

Where can you find help? Try discovering a partner on Google Analytics 360. Formerly known as Google Analytics Premium, this add-on for data quality management is partner first. An expert team comes with the license. Confirming a partner’s technical expertise for your organization’s field requires you to examine their samples, references, industry experience, and certifications. After that, make sure their services and practices align with what your company needs. Together, you can refine your company’s data.

Source: InfoTrust

August 27, 2021
Daniel Miessler: Google Being ‘Left Behind Due to Horrible UI/UX’
Respected cybersecurity professional and tech writer Daniel Miessler is making the case that Google is being “left behind due to horrible UI/UX.”

While many think of user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) in the content of desktop applications, UI/UX design is an important part of web app development. Especially as web apps have rivaled desktop apps for power and abilities, the line between the two categories has become increasingly blurred, making UI/UX more important than ever.

Unfortunately for Google, the company appears to be lagging behind in its UI/UX efforts, according to Miessler. While acknowledging that Google Analytics’ poor interface was at least partially excused by the engineering-centric nature of some of Google’s products, Miessler points out the problem is spreading.

“But lately it’s just becoming too much.
- Even Gmail is a cesspool at this point. Nobody would ever design a webmail interface like that, starting from scratch.
- What happened to Google Docs? Why does it not look and behave more like Notion, or Quip, or any of the other alternatives that made progress in the last 5-10 years?
- What college course do I take to manage a Google Analytics property?”
Miessler highlights an important factor that should be a concern to Google, or any incumbent company: agile startups like Quip. Years ago the barrier-to-entry was much higher for companies looking to break into the software development market. In today’s industry, however, technologies, frameworks and APIs have progressed to the point where the barrier-to-entry is much lower. As a result, it’s important for companies to stay current, developing apps that people not only need, but also want, to use.
December 15, 2020
The Latest Tool For Cybercriminals: Google Analytics

According to cloud security firm Akamai, cybercriminals are using Google Analytics to gauge the success of their phishing campaigns.

The report highlights that just over 56.1% of all websites are using some form of analytics, with Google the leading analytics platform with 20% market share. Analytics packages provide important information, including geolocation, browser type, operating system and more.

Akamai researcher Tomer Shlomo, who penned the report, said:

“As phishing has evolved over the years, criminals have learned that technical markers, like browser identification, geo-location, and operating system, can help adjust the phishing website’s visibility, and enable more granular targeting. In order to evaluate these metrics, kit developers use third-party analytic products, such as those developed by Google, Bing, or Yandex, to gather the necessary details.

“Akamai scanned 62,627 active phishing URLs of which 54,261 are non-blank pages that belong to 28,906 unique domains. We discovered 874 domains with UIDs and 396 of the UIDs were unique Google Analytic accounts. Moreover, 75 of the UIDs were used in more than one website.”

Before companies go ripping out Google Analytics from their sites, it’s important to know that Akamai believes additional analytics are the solution to the problem, helping companies trace attackers and mitigate the damage.

“Using analytics can help you understand the full scale of a phishing campaign, and defenders can use this data to compare with internal signatures, for a more rounded detection and remediation process. Analytical data also helps understand domain targeting approaches.”

November 7, 2019
Google Just Revamped the Google Analytics Mobile App

Google released an update for the Google Analytics app on both Android and iOS, which improves access to a full overview of data and real-time business data, and lets you go deeper into reports with segments, customize your mobile dashboard, and share insights with others.

Reports are simplified with a new format for small screens and enable users to track specific metrics that aren’t there by default by letting them modify a report quickly and saving it to the mobile dashboard.

Items can be shared via email, social media, messaging, or anything else your device supports. Here’s a quick walkthrough:

Images via Google

April 22, 2016
Google Analytics Adds User Explorer Reporting (And More)

Google’s latest release notes for Google Analytics reveal some interesting new features including a new set of reporting called User Explorer Reporting. This lets customers anonymously analyze individual interactions to their site.

Google explains in the notes, “User Explorer utilizes your existing anonymous Google Analytics data to deliver incremental insights helps marketers obtain valuable insights need to improve and optimize their site.”

User Explorer can be found in the Audience sections. The report will surface Anonymous Client ID and User ID information including a history of activity. Marketing Land has a good look at the report.

Also found in the release notes are: deeplinking into AdWords from the AdWords reporting section in GA; [Attribution 360] Data Studio integration; google-analytics.com traffic moved to SSL; [Analyics 360] custom tables: align regex interpretation; flexible auto-tagging override for GA-AdWords linking; AdWords final URL dimension; new sitelinks report in AdWords reporting section in GA; [Analytics 360] Add Experiment Fields to GA’s BigQuery Export; and Google Analytics Reporting API V4.

Go here for descriptions on all of these item.

Image via Google

April 13, 2016
Google Analytics 360 Suite Aims to Make Life Easier for Enterprise Marketers

Google announced the Google Analytics 360 Suite, which is comprised of six products (four of which are brand new), and is aimed at enterprise-class marketers.

The tools combine to hep marketers see complete customer journeys, gain useful insights (making sense of the data provided), enable better sharing within their organizations, and and make their brands useful to customers.

The two previously existing products that are part of the suite are GA Premium, which has been renamed Google Analytics 360, and Adometry, which has been renamed Google Attribution 360. The remaining four products are Google Audience Center 360, Google Optimize 360, Google Data Studio 360, and Google Tag Manager 360. Here is how Google describes the new products:

Google Audience Center 360 (beta). This powerful data management platform (DMP) helps marketers understand their customers and find more like them across channels, devices, and campaigns. It offers native integration with Google and DoubleClick, plus it’s open to third party data providers, DSPs and more.

Google Optimize 360 (beta). This website testing and personalization product helps marketers deliver better experiences. Marketers can show consumers multiple variations of their site and then choose the version that works best for each audience.

Google Data Studio 360 (beta). A new data analysis and visualization product that integrates data across all suite products and other data sources ― turning it into beautiful, interactive reports and dashboards. Built-in real-time collaboration and sharing is based on Google Docs technology.

Google Tag Manager 360. Built from our industry-leading tag management product, it empowers enterprise marketers to move faster and make decisions with confidence. It offers a simplified way to gather site information (all those tiny bits of code) and powerful APIs to increase data accuracy and streamline workflows.

Audience Center 360, Optimize 360, Data Studio 360, and Tag Manager 360 are available today in limited beta. GA Premium and Adometry customers will see the products renamed in the coming months, and Google will let you know when you’re eligible to joint the new betas.

Image via Google

March 15, 2016
Google Adds Google Analytics Support for AMP

While this was always intended to be part of the whole thing, Google just announced Google Analytics support for Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP), which the search engine will start sending traffic to next month.

Earlier this week, Google said AMP will support most ad-serving scenarios you’re likely to use, so that’s helpful too.

In a post on the Google Analytics blog, Google writes:

“Today, the AMP team announced the launch of an analytics component that will enable measurement on AMP pages. The Google Analytics team is committed to helping our users measure their content wherever it appears. So, for publishers looking to use AMP to provide an improved user experience, we’ve released Google Analytics measurement capabilities for Accelerated Mobile Pages. AMP support in Google Analytics makes it easy to identify your best content and optimize your user experience.”

“Analytics on AMP is handled by an open source, reusable component that the Google Analytics team helped build. The <amp-analytics> component can be configured with Google Analytics specific configuration parameters to record pageviews, events, and even custom dimensions. That configuration works hand in hand with a global event listener that automatically detects triggers like button presses. As a result, there’s no need to scatter custom JavaScript throughout your page to detect actions that should trigger events and hits. Instead, you can define which actions should trigger hits within the configuration section and let the magic of AMP do the rest.”

Google says you should use a separate Google Analytics property to measure your AMP pages, which could be a bit of an inconvenience (my words, not theirs), but as they note, AMP is still a new technology, so give it time.

You can read more about AMP and analytics in a new post on the AMP blog.

Image via Google

January 28, 2016
Don’t Measure Conversions? That’s Ok, Google Has You Covered.

Google announced the launch of a new Google Analytics feature called Smart Goals for businesses that don’t measure conversions. The aim of the feature is to help businesses identify the highest-quality visits to their websites and optimize for them in AdWords.

Do you count yourself among the businesses that do not measure conversions? Does an offering like this appeal to you? Let us know in the comments.

AdWords advertisers use tools like Conversion Tracking and imported Google Analytics Ecommerce transactions to measure their website conversions. But what about other businesses?

As the company notes, many businesses don’t actually measure conversions. Some don’t have a way for users to convert on their site and others just may not have time or the know-how. In fact, Google says hundreds of thousands of small and medium-sized businesses aren’t measuring their website conversions today.

“To generate Smart Goals, we apply machine learning across thousands of websites that use Google Analytics and have opted in to share anonymized conversion data,” explains Google in a blog post. “From this information, we can distill dozens of key factors that correlate with likelihood to convert: things like session duration, pages per session, location, device and browser. We can then apply these key factors to any website. The easiest way to think about Smart Goals is that they reflect your website visits that our model indicates are most likely to lead to conversions.”

You can activate Smart Goals from the Admin section in Google Analytics. Click Goals and select Smart Goals.

“The highest-quality visits to your website will now be turned into Smart Goals automatically. No additional tagging or customization is required; Smart Goals just work,” Google says.

There’s a Smart Goals report in the Conversions section, which will show engagement level of Smart Goals visits compared to other visits.

When you have it set up, you can import Smart Goals into AdWords and optimize accordingly.

To activate Smart Goals in Google Analytics, you’ll have to go to the Admin section, hit Goals under the View heading, and choose Smart Goals. You can see how they perform before you activate them by checking out the Smart Goals report in the Conversions section. It shows the engagement level of smart Goals visits compared to other visits.

Smart Goals can be imported into AdWords and used as an AdWords conversion like any other Analytics goal.

In AdWords, you’ll be able to set a target cost-per-acquisition and optimize your AdWords psend based on the likelihood of conversion.

“Smart Goals helped us drive more engaged visits to our website,” says Richard Bissell, President/Owner, Richard Bissell Fine Woodworking, Inc (in a Google-provided quote). “It gave us something meaningful to optimize for in AdWords, without having to change any tags on our site. We could tell that optimizing to Smart Goals was working, because we had higher sales than usual across our channels during the testing period.”

Google is rolling out Smart Goals over the coming weeks. You’ll have to have your AdWords and Analytics accounts linked to take advantage.

Google points out that your Analytics view must get at least 1,000 clicks from AdWords over a 30-day period to ensure data validity.

Do you think you’ll get use out of Smart Goals? Let us know in the comments.

Images via Google

December 10, 2015
Google AdWords Manager Accounts Get New Features

Google announced some new features for AdWords Manager Accounts (MCC) including Google Analytics account linking and remarketing tag and list sharing.

Advertisers can now link their Google Analytics or Google Analytics Premium accounts directly to their AdWords manager accounts using a new setup wizard in AdWords under account settings. This way you won’t have to link each account individually.

“Now when you import your goals, website metrics, remarketing lists, or other data from Google Analytics, you’ll only need to do it once. And whenever you add a new AdWords account to your manager account, it will automatically be linked with the same Analytics properties,” explains AdWords senior product manager Vishal Goenka. “These enhancements save time so you can focus on optimizing your campaigns. You can learn more about linking your Google Analytics account into your manager account in the AdWords Help Center.”

Advertisers also have new options for creating and sharing remarketing lists in their manager account from the new Audiences view. This includes lists imported from Google Analytics or the recently launched Customer Match.

“You can also create remarketing lists using a manager-level remarketing tag and use them across your managed accounts,” says Goenka. “This eliminates the need to retag your website and manage multiple lists in each AdWords account. If any of your managed accounts have their own lists, they can be made available for use in your other managed accounts.”

More information about the new features is available in the AdWords help center.

Images via Google

November 12, 2015
Test Your Google Analytics Implementation With Tag Assistant Recordings

Google announced the launch of Google Tag Assistant Recordings, which is aimed at helping you instantly validate your Google Analytics or Google Analytics Premium implementation. It looks for data quality issues and if it finds them, lets you troubleshoot them and recheck them immediately.

The offering is available as part of the Google Tag Assistant Chrome Extension. It works with “all kinds” of data events like purchases, logins, etc. As the company explains in a blog post:

What if you sell flowers online and want to confirm that Enhanced Ecommerce is capturing the checkout flow correctly? With Tag Assistant Recordings, you can record yourself going through the checkout process as you buy a dozen red roses, and then review what Google Analytics captured.

If you find that your account isn’t set up properly — if the sale wasn’t recorded or was mis-labeled — you can make adjustments and test it all over again instantly. With Tag Assistant Recordings, you know you’re capturing all the data that’s important to you.

In addition to being helpful when you’re implementing GA, Google says Tag Assistant Recordings can be helpful when you’ve made updates to your site or when you’re making changes to your GA configuration. Luckily it works even when your new site or changes aren’t visible to the public yet.

Once you download the Chrome extension, you’ll have to set the feature up, and then just record whatever flow you want to check and view the full report in Tag Assistant.

More on using the feature here.

August 28, 2015
Google Analytics Gets Some New Features

Google announced the addition of a new publisher reporting section to Google Analytics. This replaces AdSense Reports, and is actually called “Publisher Reporting”.

“Users with existing AdSense reports will see them move into this new section, and be joined by an integration with Ad Exchange, for those publishers that don’t currently serve Ad Exchange as backfill through DFP,” Google says in a Google+ update.

Google is also adding a new Ad Exchange linking option in the Product Linking option list in the Admin tab.

“We hope that by consolidating these reports in the new Publisher Reporting section, it will help you better benefit from the intersection of ad serving, monetization and analytics data,” Google says.

You probably won’t see the new Publisher Reporting in your account right away as Google is rolling it out over the next several weeks. Same with Ad Exchange Linking.

Image via Google

August 7, 2015
App Annie Gives Developers Free In-App Analytics With Google Analytics

App Annie, an app data service, which is in use by a reported 700,000 apps, just launched In-App Analytics in open beta with Google Analytics integration.

The new offering can be used by developers to view usage metrics along with data from five major app stores and 34 ad platforms in one centralized dashboard.

“The new additional usage data from In-App Analytics joins key performance metrics from existing App Annie products (App Store and Advertising Analytics), providing a holistic view into the health of an app portfolio and enabling time-saving aggregation, analysis and optimization,” App Annie says in a blog post.

Once the user connects their Google Analytics account, they can see things like app retention, daily sessions, session rate, platform usage comparisons, usage in international markets, daily active users, etc.

The App Analytics dashboard will show total sessions, total time, average sessions per user (per day, week, or month), average session duration, and active users (DAU, WAU, or MAU).

More on connecting your account here.

Images via App Annie

July 9, 2015
Google Analytics Remarketing Lists Extended To Search Ads

Google said on Thursday that it will now let advertisers use audiences (formerly known as remarketing lists) created in Google Analytics to reach people on Google Search without any changes to tagging.

Google’s Remarketing Lists for Search Ads (RLSA) lets an advertiser tailor search ads to users based on their past activity on the advertiser’s website. This can now be utilized in conjunction with over 200 Google Analytics dimensions and metrics, and audiences can be used to re-engage customers across Google Search and the Display network with a consistent message.

Google has a case study looking at how financial services provider TransUnion used Google Analytics audiences to “spend more efficiently” on Google Search and get “impressive conversion rates and cost efficiencies”. You can take a look at that here. The company reportedly

increased its conversion rate by 65% and average transaction value by 58% while lowering both CPCs for existing customers and cost per transaction by 50% each.

There’s an Instant Activation feature, so you can start using RLSA by going to Property > Tracking Info >Data Collection from the Admin tab, and making sure Remarketing is set to “ON”. Then, all eligible audiences will start to populate for RLSA.

Google says there are three ways to create new audiences. You can use the Audience builder in the remarketing section of the Admin tab and select the relevant Adwords accounts, or if you have an existing segment you want to turn into an audience, you can click on the segment options and hit “Build Audience”. It will then take you to the audience builder. The other option is to import audiences from the Google Analytics Solutions Gallery.

“Once you have shared an audience with AdWords, it will appear instantly in your AdWords Shared Library and will show eligible users in the column List size (Google search),” says Google in a blog post. “Keep in mind that an audience must accumulate a minimum of 1,000 users before you can use it for remarketing on Google Search.”

This help center article on AdWords remarketing lists for search ads should tell you just about everything you need to know.

June 25, 2015
Google Talks App Indexing, AdWords & Analytics At Google I/O

Google has been experimenting with app indexing for quite a while, but in recent months it has really cranked up the significance of it. Last week, it took that to even greater heights.

App indexing is now a ranking signal in Google’s mobile search results, and last week, Google announced that it’s expanding it to iOS after previously only offering it for Android. As more Google searches are now taking place on mobile devices than on computers in ten counties, more businesses are probably going to want to consider having their own apps and making sure their content is indexed in Google’s search results.

At Google I/O, Google had a session called “Smarter user acquisition with App Indexing, AdWords and Google Analytics”. You might want to watch that one. It’s about 40 minutes long. Here’s the official description of the session:

Content discovery on mobile isn’t easy. Luckily, this is a familiar problem to Google. With App Indexing on both iOS and Android, you can engage users organically by surfacing app content in the search results page. And on Android specifically, you can even drive app installs for users who don’t have your app. Google’s smart mobile ads platform gives you access to AdWords, the world’s largest network, to find the right users who will install and engage with your app, plus you can gain insights through Google Analytics install attribution to know where your users came from. Discover Google’s variety of approaches to driving app discovery, growth and engagement in this session.

You can watch the whole thing right here:

Obviously Google I/O has provided a lot of important content for Android developers. Here’s a look at four important sessions from the event that you should check out if you get a chance. Here’s the entire opening keynote.

Related reading:

Mobile Apps Mean More For Search Visibility

How To Set Up App Indexing For Ranking In Google

Google Announces App Deep Linking With goo.gl

Image via YouTube

June 1, 2015
Google Analytics Lets You More Easily Analyze Patterns In Search Queries

Google announced a new query word count dimension for AdWords search queries in Google Analytics. This will enable users to more easily analyze patterns without having to manually classify them.

Google announced the update in a Google+ post:

Earlier this week, Google Analytics made remarketing activation easier with a new Instant Activation feature that you can set up under the Audiences setting. More on that here.

Image via Google+

January 30, 2015
Google Analytics Makes Remarketing Activation Easier

In an effort yo make it simpler for advertisers to enable remarketing, Google has added the ability in Google Analytics to do so with a single toggle with new Instant Activation. Now, rather than manually updating all of your site tags, you can use the new feature to take advantage of remarketing more quickly.

“For many advertisers, remarketing is an essential tactic,” Google says in a blog post. “But remarketing can be a difficult journey, even for the savviest digital marketer. We repeatedly see marketers struggle with tagging hurdles and complex implementation challenges, with the result that only 1 in 5 remarketers successfully completes their setup.”

To use Instant Activation, go to “Audiences” under the Remarketing section in your Google Analytics Property’s settings, then choose the AdWords account where you want to share your audience and hit “Next Step”.

From there, click “Enable” to create an audience of All Users.

“You can also come back later and create more complex audiences, like ‘visitors who have spent more than six minutes on site’, ‘visitors who visited more than five pages’, or ‘abandoned cart,’” says Google. “This step automatically activates Advertiser Features if you haven’t done so already, which also enables Audience Demographics and Interests Reporting. You can manage this setting at any time in the Admin tab, under the ‘Advertiser Features’ section in your Property Settings.”

Go to “Create Campaign,” and you’ll be presented with a remarketing campaign creation process in AdWords, then you’re good to go.

Images via Google

January 29, 2015