School’s out, but the learning never stops

Google Analytics and Google Website Optimizer Seminars for Success are a great way to get in-depth, hands-on training on two products that can help you maximize your marketing and website ROI. Seminars are available coast-to-coast all summer long. Starting in June, we have three sets of seminars being held in New York, Phoenix, and Chicago.

Here’s a look at what you’ll learn by attending a seminar with one of our Google Analytics Certified Partners (GACP).

Google Analytics – Introduction & User Training

Whether you’re just getting started or have been involved with Google Analytics for a while, if you’re looking for a thorough training in all of the reports Google Analytics provides, this is the course for you. First, you’ll get a detailed background in the web analytics industry. Then you’ll go through a detailed examination of all of the reports Google Analytics has to offer, with real-world examples of how they can help you. You’ll also learn how to segment your site’s users, spot key trends, and of course, how to take your web analytics data and use it to your advantage.

Google Analytics – Advanced Analysis Techniques

If you’re already familiar with the basics of Google Analytics and are looking to become more sophisticated in your analysis, this course will show you how to do just that. Whether your business goals are user engagement, lead generation, or e-commerce, you’ll benefit from learning how to use the most advanced analysis features of Google Analytics, like Intelligence and Advanced Segmentation.

Google Analytics – Implementation & Advanced Topics

For those who are comfortable with Google Analytics but want to dive deeper into the technical side of GA, this advanced technical implementation course is for you. This training is tailored a bit more toward the tech-savvy, but is extremely valuable to anyone who wants to learn what Google Analytics can do when taken beyond the “plain vanilla” implementation. You’ll go “under the hood” of Google Analytics and learn about filter configuration and setup, opportunities for advanced, custom implementations, as well as the newest beta features that are rolling out.

Website Optimizer

Once you’ve nailed down your Google Analytics implementation, you’re ready to start taking action on your data by testing your website. This interactive training in Google Website Optimizer teaches you how to test your site to improve your users’ experience and your business’s bottom line. Attendees will receive a strong background in landing page testing and testing best practices, many real-world case studies, and an optional, hands-on lab experience in starting both A/B and Multivariate tests.

New York, NY: Register Here

June 8: Google Analytics Introduction & User Training

June 9: Google Analytics Advanced Analysis Techniques

June 10: Google Analytics Implementation & Advanced Topics

Phoenix, AZ: Register Here

June 9: Google Analytics Introduction & User Training

June 10: Google Analytics Implementation & Advanced Topics

June 11: Google Website Optimizer

Chicago, IL: Register Here

June 23: Google Analytics Introduction & User Training

June 24: Google Analytics Implementation & Advanced Topics

June 25: Google Website Optimizer

If these dates don’t work for you, see the complete Seminars for Success schedule.

Posted by Trevor Claiborne, Google Analytics Team

New Google Analytics Book Released

A new book by a stellar team is now available for you to take your usage of Google Analytics to the next level. It's called Performance Marketing with Google Analytics, by Sebastian Tonkin (former Googler), Caleb Whitmore of Analytics Pros and Justin Cutroni from WebShare (both Google Analytics Certified Partners). Here's what Sebastian told us about it when we asked him how this book was different from others:

Sebastian: "Google Analytics can save you money! Use it to figure out what works with your online marketing, invest in that, and throw out the rest. This is the focus of our new title on Google Analytics geared toward business people and online marketers with an eye toward the bottom line."

Avinash Kaushik pitched in with a Forward, writing: "The key to real and magnificent success is not the ability to purchase a tool... but rather the ability to ensure a clean implementation and bring to it a mental model that will rock this world. This book is focused, page after detailed page, on doing just that."

See how real-world businesses use Google Analytics to drive online strategy and improve ROI on a daily basis. Follow step-by-step examples and learn how to:

• Track and optimize social media, SEO, email and offline campaigns.
• Maximize ROI on your marketing spend.
• Build a strong team to support Google Analytics inside your organization.
• Get more from your Adwords campaign.
• Use the web to understand what customers want.
• Create customer loyalty on your site.
• Use feedback from users to guide online strategy.
• Win share from competitors.

Caleb went further into depth on the contents: "This book tackles the delicate challenge of teaching how to think as well as what to do.

• The first section focuses on the philosophical, managerial and organizational aspects of succesfully utilizing web analytics technologies to drive greater marketing performance.
• The second section covers the end-to-end of how to plan, install, configure, and use Google Analytics to its fullest capability.
• The final sections then covers application of the concepts and capabilities from the first sections to specific marketing disciplines - site optimization, display and sponsored search ads, organic search engine optimization, offline, email marketing, and more.

The end result: learn how to think, get guidance on setting up Google Analytics correctly, and then discover practical steps to drive higher performance from all aspects of marketing."

Thanks guys, and great work. Grab a copy on Amazon or find out more on the book's companion site, www.analyticsformarketers.com.

Posted by Jeff Gillis, Google Analytics Team

Web Analytics TV #9 with Avinash and Nick

This is the 9th exciting episode of Web Analytics TV with Avinash Kaushik and Nick Mihailovski, where you ask questions about web analytics via the Google Analytics Google Moderator site and we answer them. We had lots of fun putting this episode and we hope you get a kick out of watching it. Here is the list of last week’s questions.

In this action-packed episode we discuss:

• How to track each referral source overtime for visitors
• How to share custom segments and reports with other people
• Getting transaction data for only one referral source
• Is there a place to share Google Analytics code snippets and regular expressions?
• Cross domain tracking when users right-click and open in a new window
• How you need to think about Page Speed and Google Analytics
• Using the comparison report with two date ranges (and hypercube space)
• Sending historical or futuristic data into Google Analytics
• Why eCommerce reports do not match an eCommerce backend system
• Tracking commas instead of decimals for revenue in eCommerce
• Tracking pigViews (just watch the video :-)
• Reporting on content consumption (like pageviews) by keywords
• Setting the visible number of rows in reports
• How to normalize keywords to replace underscore with spaces
• Best practices on upgrading to async tracking code
• Best practices to report on cities in a particular state

If you found this post helpful, we'd love to hear your comments. Or, please submit a question or vote for your favorite question in our public Google Moderator site and Avinash and I will answer the newest batch in a couple of weeks with another video.

Posted by Nick Mihailovski, Google Analytics Team

Greater choice and transparency for Google Analytics

Many website owners use Google Analytics and other web analytics tools to make business-critical decisions about how to improve their websites by understanding how users engage with their webpages. We’ve worked hard to make Google Analytics both a robust and reliable web analytics platform while also ensuring the trust and privacy of visitors of these websites. Today we’re taking additional steps to provide even more choice and transparency for both website owners and users.

First, we’re announcing the availability of the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on. The opt-out provides users with a choice of whether information about website visits is collected by Google Analytics. The add-on stops data from being sent from your computer when you visit websites that use Google Analytics Javascript (ga.js) to track usage. The beta version of the opt-out that we are releasing today is available for Internet Explorer, Firefox, and Chrome, and can be downloaded here: tools.google.com/dlpage/gaoptout.

Additionally, we’re also releasing new functionality for website owners to provide an additional level of privacy for visitors to their sites by offering an option to anonymize IP address information sent to Google. Google Analytics uses the IP address of website visitors to provide general geographic reporting. Website owners can now choose to have Google Analytics store and use only a portion of this IP address for geographic reports. Keep in mind, that using this functionality will somewhat reduce the accuracy of geographic data in your Analytics reports. You can learn how to implement this within your existing Google Analytics installation here: http://code.google.com/apis/analytics/docs/gaJS/gaJSApi_gat.html

We’re committed to Google Analytics as an industry-leading web analytics platform that also provides users with transparency and choice when it comes to privacy.

Posted by Amy Chang, Director of Product Management, Google Analytics

It’s now easy to set up new sites with Asynchronous Tracking

We’re happy to announce that the asynchronous tracking tag, which came out of beta last week, is now available in your admin interface when you set up a new profile. This makes it easy for everyone to start off tracking new sites with this very fast, state-of-the-art tag.

Whether you’re tracking a single domain, or a more complex site with multiple subdomains or top level domains, there’s an option in the interface to give you exactly the code you need.

Simply select the scenario that fits your needs. The admin interface now provides the asynchronous tracking code by default, but if you need the traditional tracking snippet you can find it here.

We also encourage you to upgrade your existing sites to the new tag. To help you, we’ve created complete instructions and migration examples.

Enjoy your new, faster site!

Posted by Jesse Savage, Google Analytics Team

Videos From Master Class In Singapore Now Online

Last month we held 3 successful Google Analytics Master Classes in Singapore, Kuala Lumpur, and Sydney. We were pleasantly surprised by the sheer amount of interest in web analytics in this region with close to 1000 advertisers, agencies, bloggers, developers, and technophiles attending the events. For those of you who made it out, we thank you for your participation and interest, and hope you gained valuable insights from our all star team of speakers.

The videos of all the talks from the Singapore event are now available. Each session was kept deliberately short - no speaker goes on longer than 20 minutes - in order to maintain the audience’s interest and to keep the topics flowing at a good pace. Therefore, each video is a good length to watch during work, on break, or at home, enriching your Google Analytics knowledge in convenient bite-sized portions.

Above is Beth Liebert’s (Google Analytics Product Manager, Google) keynote on web analytics. Please surf on over to this post on the Solutions for Southeast Asia blog for the full list of the videos.

Posted by Vinoaj Vijeyakumaar, JAPAC Google Analytics Lead, Global Technical Services

Updates To Our Homepage

Take a look at the Google Analytics homepage and you'll notice some small design and content changes that will improve your experience. Besides some under the hood improvements such as HTML5 and CSS2 validation, here are a few of the changes:

• Added dropdowns to the top navigation across the whole site so users can find their way to the content they want better. Try hovering over Product to see a dropdown.
• Updated the features scroller in the middle of the page with a more intuitive UI and cleaner look.
• Updated the News & Hightlights section, which now includes a link to a recent Forrester Research article, "Appraising Your Investment in Enterprise Web Analytics".
• Added a new box to the bottom right that allows the user to flip through our Strategic Solutions, including the recently announced Application Gallery.

Thanks to our fearless webmaster Mike Rigoli for spearheading these. Let us know what you think in comments below, but only if you love it. Joke :-) Enjoy.

Posted by Jeff Gillis, Google Analytics Team