Google Analytics Changes in 2011 and 2012 Predictions

Hi, I’m Anna. I’m here to talk about Google Analytics. But it’s almost Christmas, so we’re going to look at the presents that Google Analytics have given us this year. There’s quite a lot to choose from and even some I haven’t put on there, and we’ve also got some that we don’t know about yet. Google are going to have some more surprises in store for us next year, but let’s focus on what we’ve got this year.

First off, we have Google Analytics Version 5, a new interface, everything changed a couple of times, but there’s lots more functionality being added in since then. It’s also a lot faster, easier to see your data, a little bit hard to get used to, but you’ll get there and it’s worth it.

So, what have we got in the new version? We have got social statistics. So when people click +1’s, you can see whether your users are engaged or not. We’ve got SEO, an area integrating Webmaster Tools, which is quite handy but quite inaccurate. Pros and cons to every present. We’ve got Google real time reporting so we can see who’s on our site right now. That’s in beta at

the moment, but I’m sure it will be available to everybody soon. Something that’s out of beta is multi-channel funnels, lots of data about which traffic sources have helped lead to conversions, all about multi-touch attribution. Really quite useful for when you’ve got multiple entrance sources leading to certain conversions.

What else have we got? We’ve got the controversial https. Now Google have changed their search engine so that if you’re logged in, your results are now served over a secure connection. Now this stops or rather they’ve used that as the excuse for stopping the keyword data being passed on to Google Analytics for organic searches. You can still get the data for AdWords searches that are on a secure connection but not the organic. That now shows as not provided. A bit of a controversial issue.

Finally we’ve got Google Analytics Premium, a paid service that’s not going to be available to everybody because it’s so expensive. But will it be worth it? Only time will tell.

I hope you’ve got some good presents in store this year. I’ve been Anna Lewis. Please check out the Koozai blog for more information.