Seminars for Success in Vermont — AdWords, Analytics, Website Optimizer and Socializing

Ah, Burlington, Vermont in late summer....can you do any better? The summer is winding down and the last quarter of the year is still a ways away and easily prepared for. All of France is on vacation. :-) The weather is just right on Lake Champlain. There's some time to get energized for the holiday season. It's a good chance to take a break, roll up your sleeves, learn some new skills and do some networking. And if online marketing and analysis is your field, there's no better time and place than Burlington this August to do it.

Join Google Seminar for Success leaders in Burlington from August 11 - 14 for an enriching and fun few days at their Seminars For Success Summit '09. Epikone, a Google Analytics Authorized Consultant, hosts this summit every year, and we've never heard a bad word about it. This year should be the best yet. Here's what to expect:

• Industry leaders from Google Analytics Authorized Consultants EpikOne and WebShare, AdWords Seminar Leader Anastasia Holdren, Analytics Evangelist Avinash Kaushik and others will cover in-depth training on Google's online marketing suite and dive into strategic insights at the thought leadership day.
• Daily workshops will cover all aspects of Google AdWords, Google Analytics and Website Optimizer along with special sessions on social marketing, mobile strategies and more.
• Plus each night you'll experience the best Vermont has to offer while socializing with peers, including brewery tours, lake cruises, shopping, sightseeing and more.

Did we mention brewery tours? Burlington was voted one of the best small cities in which to do business by "Inc. Magazine" and offers tons of outdoor activities for families. It'll be fun, but don't get us wrong - you will come away from this Summit with increased expertise and contacts that will do nothing but benefit you and your business.

Learn more and register online at www.epikone.com/summit.


Posted by Eva Woo and Jeff Gillis, Google Analytics Team

New DDD Episode: Tools For Marketers

Google offers a bunch of free information tools that marketers can use to grow their business. They're especially useful and relevant now as budgets are tighter, while at the same time the need to grow your business has never been greater. The latest episode of Data Driven Discussions focuses on two of Avinash's favorite tools in addition to Google Analytics and Google Website Optimizer: Insights for Search and Ad Planner.

Both can be hugely informative and useful for any marketer. In this video, after typically making sure Nick, our Google Analytics Developer Relations Manager, is on his toes, Avinash, the Analytics Evangelist here at Google, gives real world use cases from his own experience using each of these products.

He uses Insights For Search to find out the actual demand around a keyword, product, trend or even industry, broken down by geography and clearly showing whether "interest over time" is growing or waning. Below, you can see a screen shot of an Insights For Search comparison between the terms "AdWords" and "Google Analytics."

Take a look at this great article on more ways to use Insights For Search, including choosing advertising messages, examining seasonality, creating brand associations, and entering new markets.

Next, Avinash discusses Ad Planner which is even more useful for a marketer. It tells marketers what websites their target customers are likely to visit so that they can make more informed advertising decisions. Avinash takes us through the Ad Planner process, where you type in an example website, keyword or demographic information which reflects the audience you're looking for, and out pops a list of sites related to those conditions, as well as traffic and demographic estimates about that site. It's incredibly easy and is a wealth of information! If you've ever wondered what sites to target - now you know. And you can even go one step further and create and save a media plan right within the tool.

And here's a video on using Ad Planner:

And at the end of the Data Driven Discussions episode, Avinash goes so far as to basically call me a dork. Though, an insult from our Analytics Evangelist is somehow like a slap on the back from a buddy who wants you to succeed.

Posted by Jeff Gillis, Google Analytics Team

Advanced Segments for Event Tracking Now Available

If you're tracking events on your site, you can now define advanced segments to isolate event related visits. So, for example, you can now see how visits with events compared to visits overall.


To do this, you'd define an advanced segment that only includes visits with events. (Set "Total Events Greater than 0" for your condition.)


Once you've defined the segment, make it active and you'll be able to make side-by-side comparisons of All Visits versus Visits with Events throughout your reports.


The variety of event related segments that you can create is only limited by the event details you track. So, if you track video interactions, you can create segments that only include visits during which videos were viewed. For a 2-minute walkthrough of how to set up event related segments, check out this video. To learn more about how to set up event tracking on your site, read the Google Analytics Event Tracking Guide on Google Code.



Posted by Alden DeSoto, Google Analytics Team

Now We're Really Tweeting

A few weeks ago, we mentioned some Google Analytics and Website Optimizer focused tweets that you can follow. Well now, as you can see if you glance over to the "Subscribe" section on the right, we've got an official Google Analytics Twitter account. Follow us at twitter.com/googleanalytics.

Here are some of our latest tweets:

GA Tip in 140Char: Segment regions in the Map Overlay report by Keyword to see regional search trends
4:44 PM Jul 22nd from web

@drumFunny For optional parameters that have no values you can use an empty string. More here: http://tr.im/tAmL
3:25 PM Jul 22nd from web in reply to drumFunny

@redduck666 Requested duly noted Almir. Thank you.
3:15 PM Jul 22nd from web in reply to redduck666

@thegrif Segmented sums do not equal the non segmented sum. Each dimension could have some overlap.
3:14 PM Jul 22nd from web in reply to thegrif

Want to learn more about GA? Google Analytics Learning Resources Roundup: http://tr.im/rqUR Enjoy!
2:28 PM Jul 8th from web

One of the easiest & fun guides to setting up Goals & Funnels:http://tr.im/mJST Bonus points for setting up goal values.
5:25 PM Jul 6th from web

New Google Website Optimizer feature added today, it automagically stops showing poorly performing combos:http://bit.ly/ir8JK

3:57 PM Jul 6th from TweetDeck

Ever wonder how to use Google Analytics and Website Optimizer together? Watch the quick new shiny video: http://bit.ly/W10qI

5:48 PM Jul 2nd from TweetDeck


Posted by Jeff Gillis, Google Analytics Team

Some Upcoming Events for Beginners and Experts

Are you ready to get serious about Google Analytics and/or Website Optimizer and looking for some hands on training to take you to new levels? Have you seen a Google Analytics educational video and thought, "I'd love to talk about this stuff in person?" Do you find yourself logging into your Google Analytics or Website Optimizer account more often and having specific questions? Are you itching to improve your marketing and web design ROI?

Yes? Well then, check out Seminars for Success, going back to Los Angeles and Chicago due to popular demand and the fact that you can never visit these 2 cities often enough!

Seminars for Success are day-long seminars designed to help you improve your online marketing and get the most out of Google Analytics and Google Website Optimizer. We've selected industry professionals from our Authorized Consultant network to teach these seminars in cities around the U.S. There are both beginner and advanced seminars. Here are the dates of the upcoming seminars:

• Google Analytics – Introduction & User Training:
  Wednesday, July 29 - Los Angeles
  Wednesday, September 16 - Chicago
  
  
• Google Analytics – Advanced Technical Implementation:
  Thursday, July 30 - Los Angeles
  Thursday, September 17 - Chicago
  
  
• Landing Page Testing with Google Website Optimizer:
  Friday, July 31 Los Angeles only!

For more information on the content of the seminars and to register, visit the Los Angeles seminars site or the Chicago seminars site.


In your spare time, do you think about new advanced segments to create? Do you know who said, "Do Something Surprising: Don’t Puke Data Out"? Have you ever attempted multi-campaign attribution or social media marketing?

If you answered yes to any of the above, then you might be a web analytics power user, and should attend the X Change conference at the St. Regis in San Francisco this September. Now in its third year, the conference bills itself as a gathering for "experts and those practitioners who are serious about digital measurement." With sessions like "Measuring the New Retail Model: Social Commerce" and "Segmenting and Targeting Visitors: Advanced Tips and Tricks" we think it will be fun and educational - a worthwhile three days. You'll leave with some new techniques and honed skills to be sure. For the first time this year, they're offering "Think Tank" breakout sessions where you'll get hands on training in some of the latest and most practical techniques.

Use the discount code "WAD15" for 15% off when you register and make sure to say hi to our own Brett Crosby after he participates in the "Four Founders" keynote to open the conference. Brett and a few other founders of web analytics companies will be discussing the evolution of the digital measurement industry.


Posted by Jeff Gillis, Google Analytics Team

Back To Basics: Comparing Days Of The Week

You probably already know that you can quickly compare two date ranges against each other simply by clicking Compare to Past. So, in the screenshot below, clicking Compare to Past will allow me to compare the current period (Mar 16 - Apr 15) with the previous period (May 16 - May 15).

Once I click Apply, I'll see the graph below. The problem, though, is that this graph is not very useful to me as a comparison tool because the days of the week don't line up.

The first day of the current period (March 16) is a Monday, so I'll use the date slider to move the first day of the previous period back to Feb 9, also a Monday. Just click the Timeline tab to see the date slider and drag the previous period (in green) to the left, one day at a time. The date will change in the text box as you drag the slider. Then, click Apply.

Once I've lined up my days, I can compare weekdays to weekdays, and weekends to weekends. For example, I can see that, except for the first Wednesday, I received more traffic on all of the Wednesdays in the previous period.

Next time you use Compare to Past, try using the date slider to adjust your previous time period. It's possible that you'll uncover new insights about your day to day traffic.


Posted by Alden DeSoto, Google Analytics Team

Shout out to Google Reader

Every now and then we like to give a shout out to another Google product and today, as avid bloggers, we wanted to mention Google Reader which allows you to subscribe to and follow any blog or website, and then read them all in one place via a table of contents on the left. It's my first stop when I open my browser in the morning, and probably where I spend the most time online. You are your own publishing house and your own news aggregator. There's also some other handy features, such as a task and notes list, as well as a way to browse other users' subscriptions, share certain content with different groups, see a trends graph on what you've been reading the most, and more.

But what we wanted to share is the translate feature. We recently posted about Google Analytics and conversion-related blogs in other languages, including Spanish, German, French, Japanese and even one focused on the UK market. A colleague brought the following to our attention: with Google Reader, you can read all of these blogs by using a translate feature to read them in your own language with the click of a button. So, if you're reading these words right now, and your first language is not English, go into Google Reader and subscribe to this blog and then translate. Here's how you do it: 1. Click and read a subscription. 2. Click the "Feed Settings" drop down. 3. Choose "Translate into my language."

Then Reader will translate the content into the language you have specified under your Google Account "Settings" page. For example, if Spanish was the language in my Settings and I chose to translate the blog, here's how it would look:


Cool, huh? Hope this was helpful for all you avid readers out there who can't get enough of analytics in just one language.

Posted by Jeff Gillis, Google Analytics Team