Google rolling out much improved Google Analytics V2

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Google is in the process of releasing a significant update to the free web analytics tool it launched to wide acclaim in November 2005.

Although we’ve appreciated the professional feature set in Google Analytics, especially given the cost, the user interface was cumbersome at best. As time went on, Google Adwords features were continually patched on, making it difficult for even an experienced web analytics practitioner to navigate through a sea of somewhat repeating, redundant reports.

Google Analytics Reloaded

In version two, the Google Analytics user interface has been completely overhauled. Big bold fonts, similar to those used in feedburner’s statistics, and vibrant colors make key data points and trends much more intelligible. Report and date range selection has been simplified.

The at a glance dashboard is now customizable – sections can be added, removed and reordered. Once this is done, the dashboard can be scheduled to be e-mailed on a regular basis.

One surprise is the lack of Blog specific functionality. While some of the new user interface was probably inspired by Google acquisition MeasureMap, the new Google Analytics release didn’t include any blog specific features such as feed and comment tracking.

Bugs to iron out of the system?

I encountered several issues in a brief session with Google Analytics version 2.

• I couldn’t get the overlay report to work. While another browser window would open, the Google Analytics site overlay either never appeared, or it displayed with 0 clicks for all links. I encountered this behavior both in Firefox on Linux and in IE 7.
• When attempting to add a “saved report” to the dashboard for a profile in my Google Analytics account, Google Analytics would change to the first profile in the list. Once I added a report to the dashboard from a different top level menu, the problem disappeared.
• The online help system, linked from the new interface, still reflects the old version of Google Analytics. I couldn’t find an explanation of what the menu tree Dashboard -> Saved Reports is supposed to do other than link to reports available from other parts of the overall menu tree.
• Most web analytics systems, including the prior version of Google Analytics, provide a breakdown of visits and page views by the hour for a given day. This functionality seems to have been removed.

Enhancement suggestions

• I would like to be able to sort reports on the first data column.
• I would like to be able to change the default number of data elements in a list from 10.
• I would like to be able to define multiple dashboards in order to send personalized reports to different people in an organization. In the previous incarnation of Google Analytics, there were three role based dashboards, oriented toward Executives, Marketers and Webmasters. This wasn’t a bad idea. While a one-off ad-hoc report can be sent, it appears that scheduled reports will reflect the current report composition.
• The geographic map is too granular at the top level. Does any marketer really lump together all of the Americas or western Europe with Russia? While this level is useful, perhaps the default should be more granular, allowing the user to zoom out to this higher level aggregation upon request.

Overall, the Google Analytics team deserves praise – they’ve done excellent work.

Microsoft Gatineau on the horizon

Google’s release is timely as Microsoft has been working on its own web analytics service, code named Gatineau. since acquiring DeepMetrix and its LiveStats in May 2006. Microsoft appears to be close to opening Gatineau to beta testing although they will likely proceed cautiously. Microsoft will remember the pain Google experienced after having underestimated the demand for a free web analytics tool.

I’m looking forward to Microsoft’s entry into the Web Analytics market.

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