There are two possibilities outcomes at this time

• The first is that the issue is with storing or reporting on the data, in which case we will expect Google to be able to restore the data at some point in the near future.
• The second option is if Google encountered issues gathering or interpreting the data, it then may not be possible for Google to return the information for us to report on

Initial anecdotal reports on the Google webmaster forum posts hint towards it being most likely that the data will be recoverable at some point in the future. We can also confirm that data is being fully reported on the 1st November, and on the 3rd of November. This suggests that Google are currently fully in control of the issue, and will be actively working on it.

Google Analytics has become the industry leading analytics package since Google launched it in November 2005, after acquiring the website tracking company Urchin earlier that year. Google Analytics is estimated to be used on 57% of the 10,000 most popular websites and 49.95% of the top 1,000,000 websites.

Paul Spreadbury
SEO Manager

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Account Management Dashboard
Newly added accounts are displayed in a new management dashboard showing an overview of accounts with key performance metrics showing in-line, e.g. Visits, Avg. Time on Site, Bounce Rate, Completed Goals, % Change & Actions. This feature offers users the ability to take a glance at some useful statistics making it easier to manage and monitor accounts.

Custom Reporting Overview Beta
Although in beta stage this very powerful tool offers users the ability to create, save, and edit reports to give you a specific view of your data, users can drag and drop to choose the information and metrics you wish to see in your own custom analytics report., users can find out answers to questions like, How are my keywords performing in different countries? Simply by selecting various metrics and dimensions to generate a custom report.

Advanced Segmentation Beta
This feature enables users to isolate and analyse subsets of your traffic, you can create powerful filters on the fly with just a few mouse clicks and even compare segment performance side by side, by selecting predefined custom segments or creating new custom segments using the easy to use segment builder.

These updates are a very welcomed addition, making an already very essential tool, a more invaluable resource, as less time is required to decipher the complex data and decision making process is made easy with the aid of this free tool.

Google Analytics New Management Dashboard

SEO Programmer
Vipul

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If you’ve not yet heard of Google Analytics, it’s basically one of many tools the giant search engine has made available for free to webmasters. It allows you to track interesting data about the visitors to your site, such as the number of visitors, how they got to your website and much more.

So much more in fact, that many people don’t even realise it’s possible to track some of the data. A few examples of Google Analytics’ more advanced features:

• E-Commerce Tracking – in my opinion one of the most valuable features of Google Analytics if you have an online shop, e-commerce tracking allows you to see exactly how much each visitor to your site is worth.
• Site Search – if you have a search facility on your website, Google Analytics gives you the option of tracking what visitors are looking for on your website. This then allows you to make much more informed changes to your website that ensure it is working as efficiently as possible.
• Visitor Filtering – if you’re worried about skewing your analytics data by visiting your own website from home or work computer, Google Analytics actually has an option to ignore certain visitors or groups of visitors.
• External Link Tracking – by simply adding a small piece of code to external links on your page, you can see how often each one is clicked on by your visitors.

Rik
Head Of Web Development

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You may think a video playing on your website will help to increase conversions, or keep them on your site that little bit longer. However, evidence actually suggests a video can have adverse effects on your site, depending on how it’s implemented. Let’s say you decide to make your introductory video autoplay when a user first gets to your site – you might be surprised to hear that this makes a lot of people leave the site immediately. Analytics on one website that did this shows a spike in the homepage’s bounce rate from below 30% to around the 70% mark. That’s 7 out of 10 users leaving your site just because of a video! They might be in an office and so the sudden burst of sound could attract unwanted attention, or perhaps they are one of the substantial number of people still on a low internet connection who simply don’t want to wait for the page and video to load.

To be fair, there is a fairly simple compromise. Make sure the video doesn’t play automatically, and you shouldn’t notice a huge difference in your bounce rate. This change was made on the website already mentioned before, and their bounce rate quickly dropped right back down again to an acceptable level.

It’s still worth keeping a close eye on your analytics, as it can be interesting to see what the right presentation in a video can do for your conversion rates.

Rik
SEO Programmer

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I decided to check website statistics across a number of sites that achieve a good number of sales and rank well. More importantly, rank well for both the single and plural versions of a keyword. The following is average data for the past 12 months from 2 websites in the electrical goods industry, for keywords that all rank in the top four in Google’s organic results (above the fold on most computers). Perhaps it’s a sign of our abilities in SEO, but there was enough analytics data to also include statistics for keywords with “’s” at the end of them:

widget

Traffic over the past year: 9000 unique visitors
Average transaction value: £800
Conversion rate: 0.23%
Per visit value: £1.54

widgets

Traffic over the past year: 4000 unique visitors
Average transaction value: £600
Conversion rate: 0.34%
Per visit value: £1.77

widget’s

Traffic over the past year: 1500 unique visitors
Average transaction value: £450
Conversion rate: 0.19%
Per visit value: £0.85

Looking at these results, the first thing you may notice is how the singular version of the keyword tends to be the most searched, and this was generally the case across most of the keywords checked. Not too surprising was that the ’s version of the keywords were searched at much lower volumes.

Average transaction values follow a similar trend, though it is worth pointing out that there was much more variation in this across the different keywords.

Interestingly, conversion rates are generally higher for the plural versions of keywords, and it’s not immediately obvious why this would be the case. One theory could be that people searching for the singular version of the keyword have a particular model or make in mind which they’re not finding on our website, while people searching for the plural version are more open to the options available and choose from what our websites have to offer. Again, the ’s version was quite far behind in conversion rates.

The plural version comes out on top for per visit value too, although figures are much closer between the plural and singular versions. Taking into account the average traffic over the year too, it follows that the singular version has actually led higher levels of revenue than either of the other types of keyword.

Be aware that these figures are not necessarily the case for all keywords. This was only a relatively small sample, and in only one industry. It’s possible that the demographic of people searching for electrical goods have very different searching and buying habits than those searching for, say, beauty products.

It is interesting, however, that there are significant differences in results between the singular and plural keywords in our test. Ideally, broader tests need to be done to include keywords related to more industries but these initial results certainly lead me to believe that there is value in researching this kind of information for your own industry before committing to a search engine optimisation campaign.

Rik
SEO Programmer

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The updates to the free online Google Analytics will include the ability to monitor data from internal site searches, a feature many have been suggesting for a while. It will work with many Google-based and non Google-based search products, and will provide valuable information about user navigation and search patterns. This information can then be used to improve usability of the site and provide new insight into keyword research.

Another update being rolled out soon is that of Event Tracking. It has been a problem on many a ‘Web 2.0′ site, where actions such as filling in a form are triggered by the user without changing page, that user actions and conversions are difficult (if not sometimes impossible) to track successfully. Google Analytics will allow you to set up a particular action as an event to be tracked which can include applications such as Ajax and Flash.

For those of you who remember the original Urchin tracking software from which Google Analytics originated, you may be pleased to hear a long-awaited update is being rolled out by the team at Google. Having recently been criticized for seemingly abandoning the desktop version, they have announced the limited beta release of the new Urchin Software. It will include all the expected features and some extra improvements and support. However, it’s important to note it is only available on a 90-day free trial, after which you will have to pay to continue using Analytics from your desktop.

Rik
SEO Programmer

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Nobody can deny the valuable data that analytics provides companies and publishers in online measurement. If you remember the days when web logs actually meant tens of megabytes of raw data a month to trawl through just to get a fix on how many ‘hits’ your site got, then the analytics revolution truly is a gift.

We have visual interfaces and reasonably simple access to data. Comparative data is available easily, and if you have the time to drill through the data (and you know how of course) you can get a reasonable view of performance.

The key here though is the time factor. Yes, in most analytical packages you can automate reports for data sets and charts etc. But thats all you get – data. There is so much data available and so many ways of interpreting it, most feel lost.

Thats where MPM comes in. The key to using any data is to convert it into information and to interpret it. Marketing Performance Measurement (MPM) is essential in the strategy and decision making process of your business.

Understanding the implications of your data on website usability, customer journey and experience.

Are your landing pages working?
Which search terms are converting best and why?
Which paid search positions provide the best ROI?

Remember that the best converting terms may not give you the best ROI. Often the difference is Cost between position one and three or four is enough to eat into ROI. Which areas of your site generate most quality leads?

What are the most regular user journeys and how can you capitalise on that by changing calls to action and conversion pages?

At Just Search we offer clients, not only analytics systems, but if appropriate; real time performance interfaces and monthly MPM reports that rather than trawling through data, enables a top level view of performance with key observations and recommendations.

We partner with leading analytical suppliers to ensure clients have access to data as quickly and in depth as they need it, and to provide us with the key data required to make those all important observations and recommendations. Essential to online marketing success is real information and an understanding of how to improve the performance of both website and marketing activity.

For more information on Just Search Analytics and MPM see our Just Search Analytics section

Tony Meehan
Head of Paid Search, Just Search

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As you are probably aware, Google Analytics is a free application from the good people at Google which allows you to track visitors on your website. By adding a small piece of JavaScript code to all the pages on your website you can gain information about each visitor such as what pages they look at, how long they stay on the website, and if they have come to your site through a search engine Google Analytics will even tell you what term they have searched for.

Now, over the last few days Google have started to transfer user’s Analytics accounts over to a newly designed interface with many more fancy widgets than ever before. Getting to the information you need should now be easier, as well as more extensive reporting allowing much more accurate and detailed conclusions to be made on visitor behaviour. Highlights include:

• New Ajax/Web2.0 design that allows access to more information without page reloading, personalisation of the overview page and more.
• Revamped geographical overlay of your site’s visitors.
• My personal favourite, the ability to send out automated reports by email to multiple accounts, in multiple formats.

Here at Just Search we have extensive experience using the current Google Analytics application and we are quickly developing our knowledge of the new interface, so if you have any questions about our intelligent web analytics reporting please don’t hesitate to get in touch.

Rik Weber
SEO Consultant

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Of course your site won’t be perfect to every user but trying to capture what the majority wants can turn browsers into conversions. A good rule of thumb is the three click rule, try and make everything accessible via a maximum of three clicks, this works for users and search engines. Look at your internal linking, does the design funnel clients down the right path? Do users have to many options? This can be confusing.

The design of your site has an impact on how it performs, KISS (Keep it simple stupid), if your site functions well and is easy to use then you have a larger chance of capturing the browser. Look at your stats, how many people bookmark your website, where do people go and what are you actually trying to push.

Maintaining a good website is not a simple task and you should review your site often. A good Marketing campaign will always go back to basics , get feedback from people looking on your site that don’t know your industry, is your site to technical or not technical enough?

Overall evaluation is monitor you stats and analytics, then make subtle changes and watch the effect.

Neil Walker
Technical Director.

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One mindset is to collect and collate analytic data in order to determine how a Natural SEO campaign is performing for a particular website. This data could also be used to predict how we expect a campaign to pan out over time.

More importantly however our main ideas on analytics are to provide a blueprint for further developments on not only the Natural SEO but also on any Paid advertising management clients take out. We see analytics as being the link between the two services. Enabling us to bring together both the main areas of search engine marketing to cover all opportunities when it comes to the web and our clients.

Other things that analytics will be able to provide are statistical data on how websites are performing not just from a search engine point of view but in general, a good thing for ecommerce website owners who will be able to see where their money is being made.

I hope to bring you more insights into what Just Search have planned for both SEM and Analytics. Not to mention the further insights we`re always making into Natural Search Engine Marketing.

Martin Vernon
Natural SEO Project Manager

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