Update

Swine flu update in Hamden.

Check your blogs for comments and respond if needed.  

Be sure to leave time for proofreading your project.

Event Tracking Now Available in All Accounts

Event Tracking is a feature of Google Analytics that allows you to track visitor actions that don't correspond directly to pageviews. It's a great fit for tracking things like:

• Downloads of a PDF or file
  
• Interaction with dynamic, AJAX sites
  
• Interaction with Adobe Flash objects, embedded videos and other media
  

Unlike virtual pageviews, Event Tracking will not alter your pageview count. This makes it the preferred method for tracking a variety of visitor actions.

We're happy to announce that earlier today Event Tracking became available by default in all Google Analytics accounts. To access the new reports, just navigate to the Content Section of the Google Analytics interface and select the option labeled "Event Tracking."

Screenshot of Event Tracking reports

In future posts, we'll explain more about some of the ways you can put Event Tracking to good use. For now, here are some great resources to get you started:

• How to send Events to Google Analytics (Code site)
• Event Tracking Overview/Tutorial (Analytics Talk)
• Tracking Flash Videos with Event Tracking (Inside RIA)
  

Note, your reports will not show data until you start sending events. You can use the above resources to find about more about how to send events to Google Analytics.

We hope you enjoy the feature. Leave a comment and let us know what you think!

Posted by Nick Mihailovski, Google Analytics Team

Exam Notes

Some exam notes:

• This class has been about telling a story.  It has been my mantra since Day One.  After looking at the rough drafts I notice that some of you are really struggling with this.  I highly advise finishing a rough draft now.  Only then can you evaluate your story.  
• Be sure your images/pages are consistent in tone.  The rough drafts seem to have images that don't match in color/style/etc...This is especially true with the Flash projects.  Think of the Red Riding Hood example.  Each frame looks like it is part of the same story.
• Get it done.  Some of you really, really, really need to consider working harder.  This is 20% of your grade.
• Some of you are doing children's stories.  Remember, most children can't read.  Use your voice!
• Best so far: Cwyskiel (click on New1), GDipietro, Mchawla, TMorrow.

Seminars For Success - Sydney, Miami, San Diego, Dallas and Washington DC

We are offering Seminars in 4 cities this month. That's right.. down under in Sydney, Australia and then one on each coast (Miami and San Diego) and north/south (Dallas and Washington DC) just to balance it out.

These are great in person trainings and will jump start you in Google Analytics and Google Website Optimizer (San Diego and Dallas only). Return from these trainings with a practical understanding of how to use these products for your business along with some great tips & best practices... oh and if you're lucky, a nice tan.

Here's a quote from one of our past attendees:

I was really impressed that the focus of 2 day course was less to do with number crunching and much more to do with the relationships between the site and our users. The 2 day course was really well paced and full of 'light-bulb' moments. As a result of the training I've been able to go back and make quick/simple changes to our Analytics set up so that our business users can access the kind of custom reporting that they need. The course provided insights that have helped me communicate with our 3rd Party (SEO/SEM) Agencies so that we have a united view/strategy on how we want to connect all of our metrics. This has helped inform how we will interact with our users in the future. It's great to see our website as a living breathing entity...
....I'd recommend it to anyone wanting to get their hands dirty :)
Claire Spencer, Origin Energy

Google Analytics – Introduction & User Training

• Sydney, Australia - Thursday, June 4
• Miami - Wednesday, June 10
• San Diego - Wednesday, June 10
• Dallas - Wednesday, June 17
• Washington DC - Thursday, June 25

Day one offers an introduction to Google Analytics and then some. Learn how to turn the sea of web analytics data into information that you can use to make the decisions that drive your bottom line. Day one topics include:

• Introduction to Web Analytics
• Common Interface Features
• Dashboard Reports & Customization
• Understanding Visitors, Traffic Sources, Content, Goals and Ecommerce
• Motion Chart Visualization
• Analytics Best Practices for Branding, Lead Generation & Ecommerce
• And much, much more…
  

Google Analytics – Advanced Technical Implementation

• Sydney, Australia - Friday, June 5
  
• Miami – Thursday, June 11
• San Diego - Thursday, June 11
• Dallas - Thursday, June 18
• Washington DC - Friday, June 26
  

The second day will show you how to install and configure the advanced features and capabilities of Google Analytics. We'll show you how to use every ounce of this tool with tips and tricks, technical aspects, and how to avoid common problems. Day two topics include:

• Profiles and Strategies
• Filters – Uses and Implementation
• Goals & Funnels - Configuration & Setup
• Ecommerce Implementations
• Site Search, Event Tracking, Custom Reporting and Advanced Segmentation
• And much, much more…
  

Landing Page Testing with Google Website Optimizer

• San Diego - Friday, June 12
• Dallas - Friday, June 19
  

Learn how to make the most of the visitors to your site with landing page testing and get hands-on experience in designing, setting up, running, and analyzing A/B and multivariate tests with Google Website Optimizer. The experts will show you how to improve your users’ experience and continually increase your conversion rates through testing. The Website Optimizer Seminar includes:

• An overview of testing and Website Optimizer
• How to identify problematic pages and estimate sample sizes
• Loads of testing best practices drawn from real tests and case studies
• Hands-on lab experience in setting up, configuring, & launching both A/B and Multivariate tests
• How to interpret the data and run follow up experiments
  

Seats are limited, so register today for the June seminars!

• Sydney Seminars for Success
• Miami Seminars for Success
• San Diego Seminars for Success
• Dallas Seminars for Success
• Washington DC Seminars for Success

Posted by Eva Woo, Google Analytics Team

Exam: Rough Drafts

Everyone does two things today:

• Submit your rough draft to the Udrive (WebSchneider-MP4Exam).  Movies (save as movie file), Flash (export movie), or Websites (copy folder) should be named correctly (bschneiderexam).
• Complete a quick blog post.  Three questions.  First, briefly describe your project. Second, what are you learning?  Third, are you working efficiently (how will you get done?)?

A few notes:

• Be sure your voice drives the Pecha Kucha.  Monotones don't work.
• Some of you are creating way-to-complicated Flash.  Keep it simple.  Rely more on sound!!
• Be sure, very sure, that your links work in your website.  

I leave for the big track meet at 12:30.

Announcing the new Google Local Business Center Dashboard

As a Google Analytics user, chances are you know the value of good data on traffic to your website. More data means you can make better-informed decisions about how to drive traffic to your site and to your brick-and-mortar locations. But your website is just a part of your entire web presence.

Users of Google Maps and Google Search, for example, may also be interacting with your local listing on Google. While Google Analytics is fantastic for measuring traffic to your site, there has previously been no way to measure how customers interact with other elements of your web presence. That is, until today. The Google Maps team has just launched a new dashboard in its free Local Business Center (www.google.com/lbc) that will provide you with information on how users interact with your local listing on Google Maps and Google Search.

This new dashboard provides detailed metrics on traffic to local listings on Google Maps -- helping you understand, for example, how many times your listing appears in Google.com or Google Maps local search results, what search queries lead users to your listing, and what zip codes customers come from when they search for directions to your location. This is the first time this kind of data has ever been made available to business owners, and we think you'll find it highly useful.

If you're interested in learning more, head over to the Official Google Blog for a more-detailed overview or the Lat Long blog for a walk-through of the dashboard's features.

Posted by Laura Melahn, Google Maps Team

Back to Basics: Setting up Google Analytics on your Blog

Today's post covers how to install Google Analytics on the Blogger and WordPress blogging platforms. Adding analytics to your blog can tell you things like:

• Which referring sites send you the best traffic
• Which visitors are most likely to subscribe to your email list
• Which keywords have the highest engagement
• Which articles have the lowest bounce rate
• Which articles monetize best using AdSense
  
• and much more.

For more information about how web analytics can be useful for bloggers, check out Avinash Kaushik's post on useful goals for blogs.

Installing Google Analytics on Blogger

Installing Google Analytics on Blogger is very easy. Here are the basic steps:

1. Sign up for a Google Analytics account
2. Add the GA tracking code to your Blogger template
3. Wait 24 hours and login to Google Analytics to start analyzing your data

For a detailed explanation of how to complete a successful installation, read this tutorial created by eblogstemplates.

Installing Google Analytics on WordPress

You can use the same basic steps above to install Google Analytics on a WordPress blog. The team at WordPress has produced this terrific step by step video explaining this process. A huge thanks to Michael Pick for his hard work in creating this. Note, you can also use a plugin like the Analyticator plugin we described last week to install Analytics on your WordPress blog.



To view the video in a larger size, visit wordpress.tv. For more videos on Google Analytics, visit the Google Analytics YouTube Channel.

Leave a Comment

That's it for now. Still having trouble? Visit the help forum or leave a comment and let us know where you're stuck. Have you used analytics for your blog? Tell us about it!

Posted by Sebastian Tonkin, Google Analytics Team