Google Analytics Version 5

Google Analytics is a fantastic tool for any online marketing company to keep track of how many people are visiting a site. What makes it especially useful, however, is that it tells the user exactly where the incoming traffic has been directed from; for example, search engines, any referrers, PPC networks, email marketing, and digitalised links such as those placed in PDF documents. Earlier this year, Google released Analytics Version 5 Beta, and it’s been gathering a cloud of excitement since. The main additions to the features in the new version include:

• The new “home” screen: Listing all of the accounts that you have access to.
• My Site: A place where all website reports are stored.
• Multiple dashboards: Giving you the option to create numerous dashboards and access them all from one account. Maybe you want to show different groups of data to your team or create a dashboard focussing on a specific stream of data.
• New admin section: Now accessible via the navigation and using a more clearly defined hierarchy.
• Custom report types: Multiple reports can be combined, and alternate data views are provided. It is great for creating quick visualisations of your combined data.
• Multi-touch attribution: Though a separate beta, the multi-touch attribution feature allows users to track the statistics that each source of traffic brings and allows them to be presented in a visually accessible manner. This is great for SEO, PPC, and other Internet marketing strategies, as users can finally show how much SEO affects sales that were previously credited to PPC, and users of PPC can suggest budget increases when they notice PPC efforts assisting other channels.
• Word clouds: While not a new concept, they are new to Google Analytics. They are commonly used in text analysis to display words that appear most frequently, with the bigger words in the cloud being the most regularly used.

Essentially, Google has managed to build on their already successful analytics tool and make fantastic improvements based on what the users want. The only way to truly discover what an effective Internet marketing tool this is, however, is by signing up and having a play yourself.