Measuring Success with Google Analytics

There are two Google products for web analytics – Urchin Software and Google Analytics. Which one should you choose? This article describes what criteria to use for deciding between the two and is a follow up to my recent article “What is Urchin 6“.
As a general guide, Marketers prefer Google Analytics, IT departments prefer Urchin…
This statement is reflected in the user-base for each product. Urchin is mainly used for measuring intranets (an area of the business that Marketing is not involved in), and used by web-hosting providers where deployment scalability for a large number of websites is important.
On the other hand, Google Analytics, apart from being a free service (Urchin requires a purchased license), is used by organizations that wish to have greater control of their individual web analytics implementation.
Those are not mutually exclusive rules or requirements, so lets look at some criteria.
When GA is the best fit
Select Google Analytics [...]

Tools and helper applications I have come across as a practitioner come in two flavours: those that help you with your administration of Google Analytics – install, setup and configuration, and those that help you use or interpret reports – visualisation aides, third-party integration, segmentation help, and so forth.
Often these two scenarios overlap, and marketers frequently find themselves using the same toolset as webmasters and web developers. This post is a compendium of useful tools I have used for GA administration. Regardless of your job role, all the tools listed here are straightforward to use.
[ This page is an edited version of Appendix B, taken from the second edition of Advanced Web Metrics with Google Analytics. The new book is due March 2010 ]
Tools to Audit Your GATC Deployment
The key to being able to improve your website is having good, solid, accurate data that you can rely on. A fundamental step [...]

Seriously – don’t buy Advanced Web Metrics with Google Analytics (first edition)…. Why? Because there is a second edition just around the corner. In fact its due in March
The first edition is nearly two years old – eons in Internet years (well probably equivalent to dog years). Those two years were a great success – both personally for me (reading reviews of your work form people you have never met before always brings a smile to my face and a glow to my cheeks – it’s a fantastic ego boost. So much so, I have to prick my head occasionally to prevent it getting oversized!) and for the publisher, who figured out the business of printing and distributing it was good enough to invite me to update the original.
And that’s how it started out – an update. A few week’s work right, ten at tops.
However, within 3 weeks [...]

As anyone who has looked at the plethora of web metrics data available knows, even for a moderately active website, segmentation is the key to gaining insight. It allows you to group similar visitors e.g. customers, subscribers, contributors, engagers etc. together for comparison. Therefore instead of viewing metrics that are average of averages, the numbers actually mean something.
For example, quoting the Average Order Value for all customers is pretty meaningless. Knowing that the Average Order Value for visitors that have downloaded your PDF catalogue is twice that as people who haven’t, is a KPI that values your digital collateral. It allows you to make informed decisions about its prominence, content, update frequency, cross-sell and up-sell opportunities.
[ After defining and configuring goals, I view segmentation as your next most important step for your best practice web analytics setup. ]
Segmentation is important you – no, critical. So what options are available?
Within Google [...]

Just letting members know that I will be in Palo Alto (California) this October presenting a Google Analytics workshop with e-nor.
Title: Using Google Analytics to Improve Your Online Business
This is a two-day training workshop on web measurement aimed at Marketers and Webmasters. Presented by Brian Clifton and Feras Alhlou (e-nor) 19/20 Oct. If you’re looking to get on top of your web metrics, please drop me a line before sign up as I have a 15% discount code for readers, valid until the end of this week.
If you would just like to stop by and say hello, I will also be at Web Analytics Wednesday (WAW) social event in PA on Thursday(!) October 15, from 6:00 PM
If you bring a copy of the book I will happily autograph it for you
Brian Clifton

Like everyone else it appears, I certainly did not see the announcement of Adobe’s acquisition of Omniture for $1.8 billion coming. However, it reminds me of Telefonica’s $5.4 billion mind blowing purchase of Lycos in 2000. A good sales person can make it sound like a perfect match and a bargain to boot. Yet for me, it does not appear a good fit…
In recent years (since November 2005 in fact), the web analytics market has been moving away from big, expensive software projects where you pay simply to collect data. The model is now about collecting data for free – computer memory, disk space and processing power are getting cheaper each year. This has been driven mainly by Google, but also adopted by Microsoft (though that failed) and more recently Yahoo.
The model is, collect data for free and instead use your budget on insights – understanding and taking action. Avinash [...]

If you have a copy of Advanced Web Metrics with Google Analytics, or are a potential reader, would you prefer it in your local language? I have always assumed that a local language is preferred. However, I ask because when translated, I loose editorial control of the text and screenshots that can result in a degrade in book quality.

I rarely comment on news, preferring instead to trial, demonstrate and collect my thoughts before writing a blog article. However this piece of news from the official Google blog is potentially so big, I wanted to add my comments straight away (and I was a web developer in a previous life)….
Yesterday, Google announced it is developing a new computer operating system and I am sure that created quite a shockwave at Microsoft’s HQ in Seattle:
http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/introducing-google-chrome-os.html
Building a new operating system for the desk top market is a huge task – not so much from a technical point of view for a company such as Google (the company built its own operating system to run the Google infrastructure from day one – based on unix), rather the driving of user adoption where others have struggled for the past 20 years. Anyone remember OS/2…?
The history of the Mac is a case in point [...]

Google Analytics has come along way since the acquisition of Urchin was announced in April 2005. In this article I wanted to summarise the achievements made to date and discuss my view as the future for the product.

A brief history of Urchin
Urchin analytics has been around for some time. In fact since 1997, Urchin software has been slowly and quietly building a strong reputation for its server-side web analytics software. I first came across it in 2003, where its lightening fast processing power, small resource footprint and good value for money caught my attention. Even on a moderately specified Linux box, Urchin’s number crunching performance far exceeded anything else on the market – and still does today. This has made it particularly attractive to ISPs and web hosting companies that remain its largest customer base.
A differentiator for the Urchin product is its hybrid approach – combining data collection [...]

For those that are interested e-books (great for copy & paste) there is now a PDF version of the Advanced Web Metrics with Google Analytics book, purchasable from Wiley:
http://www.wiley.com/WileyCDA/WileyTitle/productCd-0470290900.html
The ebook is also available in Korean (via Acorn) and Czech (via Computer Press) – and shortly Russian. Not sure why these specific languages first, but a great deal of interest in those regions. I would be interested to hear from Arabic and Far East readers. Please drop me a line directly (my address is at the bottom of every page).

IMPORTANT: You need to ensure that the “location” is set to United States (top of page) for this to work. Also, ensure you read the “Important E-Book Information” on how to use the PDF version
If you are super cheap(!), you can read the entire content online at Google Books:
http://books.google.com/books?id=B-kjsG-vTowC&printsec=frontcover&dq=brian+clifton#v=onepage&q=&f=false
Its free (no copy & paste, no printing), so please show your thanks [...]

As a number of you have taken the effort to connect with me over recent months, I wanted to pick your brains on an idea… I have created a small (6 questions!) survey to get your feedback on a dedicated GA webinar based on the content of the book.
The questions are self explanatory and take about 1 minute to complete. So if you have the time please visit the
All answers are strictly confidential and anonymous. If you have further suggestions or questions, don’t hesitate to contact me directly – my email address is at the bottom of every page.
Thank you in advance, Brian

I recently read an article by a friend of mine Neil Mason, called – Tackling the basics of web analytics: Getting the right numbers right . To summarize, Neil discusses how difficult it can be to install even the most simplest of tracking tags (data collector beacons) across an enterprise web site. That is, a site that is large (thousands if not hundreds of thousands of pages of content), uses multiple technologies and has multiple stakeholders – often in different countries and sometimes different companies.
However, this fundamental step of getting the data in using page tags, is the key to everything else i.e. getting good, solid, accurate data in*. There simply is no point investing in analysis if the data is flawed. After all, garbage in = garbage out. And of course the web is ever changing, so maintaining data integrity is also key. Page tagging is therefore not a [...]

Many thanks to those who have provided feedback on the book so far. A couple of typos have slipped by me, so I wanted to post them here immediately. Please add if you find more. I will create a separate corrections page if needed.

page 180, Differentiating Regional Search Engines:

The placement of this code has had to change due to recent updates in the GATC. See the following post: http://www.advanced-web-metrics.com/blog/2008/09/14/customising-the-list-of-search-engines-in-google-analytics/

page 181/182:

The code pageTracker._addOrganic("images.google", "prev"); should be placed just before the line pageTracker._initData(); – Not after, as mentioned on page 178 (grey box, positioning of GATC hacks).
pageTracker._addOrganic(“images.google”, “prev”);
pageTracker._initData();

page 191, point a (referring to Figure 9.8a):

The regular expression pattern should be: (?|&)(q|p)=([^&]*) as shown in Figure 9.8a. Note the change in position of *
Thanks to Bart Geerling, of Google Amsterdam for these two.

Finally after 18 months I am excited to announce that the book has been published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc and is now available from Amazon and other outlets . The book started shipping on March 17th (coincidentally my birthday!) and just made the SES New York conference. Lucky for me as it sold out on the first day thanks to Sharon Preiss of Mobile Libris for her promotional work there.
*if you are a book affiliate and would like to link directly to Amazon, please use this book link (ISBN: 978-0-470-25312-0).
Updated Dec 2008:

Book reviews for Advanced Web Metrics with Google Analytics
Book corrections and typos

Who is the book aimed at?
Don’t be put off by the title! There are no maths and you do not need to be an analyst, statistician or engineer – I am not any of these.
The book is aimed at a broad audience – essentially anyone with [...]

I have heard the notion of Google being analogous to a bank for a number of years. Recently, Jim Sterne also referred to this bank analogy while we were discussing online privacy at the Orion Analytics panel of SES London . So I wanted share and expand upon this discussion.
Please take a moment to read my disclaimer before continuing – that is, the views express on this site are entirely my own and do not represent those of my employer.
Is Google entering into online banking?
In this respect no (I am not considering Checkout here). What I mean by being analogous to a bank, is in the way that data itself has become "currency". Information has always been valuable – no one likes to be the last to know, and being the first to know gives you a competitive advantage. So whether online or not, the storage and access [...]

Keeping a local copy of your Google Analytics data can be very useful for your organisation. For example, for third party data audits, reprocessing data, troubleshooting purposes, and for viewing data longer than 25 months (Google’s current data retention commitment). Having a local copy of the collected data allows you achieve all these.
[This post updated: 04-Aug-2009]
Benefits of keeping a local copy of Google Analytics visitor data
What you can do with your local copy of your data:

Greater control over your data e.g. for third-party audits
Troubleshoot Google Analytics implementation issues
Process historical data as far back as you wish – using Urchin
Re-process data when you wish – using Urchin

Use the following 2-step guide to keep a local copy; 1) modify your Google Analytics Tracking Code – the GATC; 2) add a small transparent gif file to your web root.
1. Modifying your GATC
If you are using urchin.js in your Google Analytics tracking, [...]

Urchin is the software company and technology that Google acquired in April 2005 that went on to become Google Analytics. Urchin software remains a product in its own right and is a downloadable software tool that runs on a local server (Unix and Windows) providing web analytics reports by processing web server logfiles – including HYBRID logfiles – which are the most accurate.

My colleague Avinash recently presented at SES San Jose his thoughts on the current vendor space including: Visual Sciences, Omniture, IndexTools, Clicktracks, WebTrends and Google Analytics. As always, his talks are very engaging and thought provoking. For me though, one slide really stood out – the idea that a HYBRID web analytics tool can’t hunt – you need to view his presentation to follow that, but essentially the analogy is that HYBRIDs are not good as a web analytics tool. As Avinash knows, I disagree with this point of view, so I wanted to explain why here.
By HYBRID tool, what is generally meant is the combination of the page tagging technique combined with logfile data to produce cookie fortified logfiles. This was discussed in a white paper before I joined Google – Web Analytics Data Sources . There are significant advantages to doing this as shown in the diagram below. [...]

My standard word of caution – This is a tech tip and requires you to have a knowledge of html and javascript to implement and use it…

[Update 03-Nov-2008: This hack is for the legacy urchin.js tracking code.
Always refer to the Scripts & Downloads section for the latest version.]

Following on from my previous post Tracking banners and other outgoing links automatically, this GA hack allows you to track downloads automatically. As you may know, tracking download files such as PDF, EXE, DOC and XLS can be achieved quite easily with the modification of the link to include an urchinTracker call to log a virtual pageview. However, as for tracking outgoing links, manually modifying each download link becomes inefficient when there are large numbers of ever changing files to track. You can overcome this by applying the JavaScript code below:
<script type=”text/JavaScript”>
// Only links written to the page (already in the DOM) will [...]

What is the 2nd thing to do when considering a web analytics implementation?

My standard word of caution – This is a tech tip and requires you to have a knowledge of html and javascript to implement and use it…
[Update 03-Nov-2008: This hack is for the legacy urchin.js tracking code.
For the ga.js version read: Customising the list of search engines in Google Analytics.]

Google Analytics shows which search engine your visitors/customers have used in the Traffic Sources > Search Engines report. To view the list of all the search engines that Google Analytics currently identifies by default, simply load into your browser http://www.google-analytics.com/urchin.js. In this file you will see the section commented as:
//– Auto/Organic Sources and Keywords
This section is where the organic search engines are defined that once captured by the Google Analytics Tracking Code (GATC) will be reported in the reports interface. By looking at this section, you will notice that the current number of organic search engines detected by default is [...]

A word of caution – This is a tech tip and requires you to have a knowledge of html and javascript to implement and use it…
[Update 03-Nov-2008: This hack is for the legacy urchin.js tracking code.
Always refer to the Scripts & Downloads section for the latest version.]

Your site may offer a visitor a link to click through to an external web site such a subsidiary, an affiliate, advertiser or an trade organisation. For Google Analytics, a visit leaving your web site requires an edit to the page in order to track it. This is achieved by modifying your outbound links to call urchinTracker and is extremely easy to do. However, what if your web site has hundreds of separate outgoing links that are constantly evolving and being appended to? Clearly manually modifying each link becomes laborious and inefficient. To overcome this you can apply the example JavaScript code below to [...]

The Google Analytics business model is unique for the web analytics industry – a deep dive reporting tool suitable for companies of all sizes (see Who uses Google Analytics? ) given away free of charge. But is there a catch to this uniqueness? Well in my view there is none. Of course, given my background I am slightly bias, but the idea behind giving away Google Analytics makes perfect sense:

Provide accountability and transparency to existing Google advertisers
Provide confidence and prove the value of online advertising to potential new advertisers

Happy customers are good for business
For Google, may be as a result of using Google Analytics, customers will remain advertisers for a longer period, become less likely to lapse their accounts (take breaks from advertising), even raise their AdWords budgets to capture a greater share of the search market. For those users that are not advertisers, perhaps Google Analytics will give them [...]

Its actually quite easy to detect which web analytics tool a web site is using – you can simply view the source code and look for the page tags yourself. Of course pure logfile analysers cannot be detected in this way, but those are now much less common due to their inherent limitations.
*This post was updated 26-Mar-2009*
To save you the laborious task of manually checking html source code, there are now various tools available that can detect the javascript page tags for you. One excellent one I use myself is WASP – a Firefox plugin (by Stephane Hamel , Immeria blog ) that shows you the web analytics vendor as you browse around the web. It can currently detect 32 different vendors including GA, Urchin, Omniture, Visual Sciences (Web Side Story), Webtrends, Unica, Clicktracks, Indextools plus many others.
Last week, I spent 30 minutes browsing around and found a number [...]

What is a GAAC? Google Analytics Authorised Consultants are experts in the field of web analytics with proven backgrounds and a high reputation. As independent companies, they are authorised to provide their professional services around the free Google Analytics product range.
GAACs provide chargeable services such as 1:1 consultation, implementation, training, data interpretation etc.
A warm welcome the latest new GAACs to join the global network – 5 for Europe 3, for the US and 1 for Australia:

Ireland – iQ Content
Italy – BitBang
Spain – Overalia
Belgium – OX2
Netherlands – Netprofiler
USA – LunaMetrics
USA – Trinity Insight
USA – WebShare
Australia – Internetrix

A list of all GAACs is shown on the right menu.

So the new generation of Google Analytics is released. Though still in beta, its a significant milestone and one that marks a new phase – Phase II. I talked about Phase I for Google Analytics at last year’s eMetrics summit in London. The initial phase was about shoehorning an existing product (Urchin) into the Google infrastructure – integrating with Adwords, scaling to handle traffic from mega sites, internationalising into 16 languages and of course making analytics accessible to all by giving it away for free.
So after the long wait, what does Phase II have to offer?
For me, the emphasis has been in 3 areas, which I list in reverse order of significance for my own usage:

Performance improvements
Feature improvements
UI redesign

1. Performance improvements: You will probably only notice this if you are a high traffic web site (usually this means above 1m+ pageviews per day). A huge engineering effort has taken place [...]

Last week on April 5th, Google launched Website Optimiser, a free multivariate testing tool. I know it should be spelt Optimizer, but I just can’t bring myself to ruin the English language!
Simply put, multivariate testing is a way of testing the effectiveness of different content combinations on your web pages. By effectiveness I mean the ability to solicit a conversion. For example, suppose you have multiple photographs of a product you sell via your web site. Which one (or combination of several) best achieves the desired effect of converting your visitors into purchasers?
Traditionally you would test one combination at a time. Using Website Optimiser, you simply create a page experiment and host your alternative content at Google. Google then delivers all possible combinations at random to visitors and measures the success (or not) of each combination by integrating with Google Analytics.
Similarly you can try combinations of titles, headlines, buttons, [...]

An important series of events for anyone interested in web analytics is Jim Sterne’s eMetrics Summit. There are currently 4 of these per year with the London event held last Thurs and Fri (29/30 March) at the Russell Square Hotel. Unfortunately, due to illness I was unable to attend in person, though Avinash Kaushik stood in for me on the vendor panel and I hear did a great job…
Some questions directed to the vendor panel and from the Google Analytics booth:

Q: What features differentiate your product from others?
Quick Answer: Ignore feature lists!

That’s always a good question that regularly comes up. I don’t know other tools in detail, but essentially as far as features go there is very little to differentiate any of the vendors. For example, they all have site overlay, geo-overlay, marketing analysis, eCommerce analysis, x-segmentation etc. Of course there are many ways to skin a cat, but [...]

At the Measuring Search Engine Marketing Success session, I had the pleasure of presenting along side Brian Donnahue (IQContent) and Nick Walsh (Net Affinity). Moderated by Danny Sullivan, the session looked at the tools available as well as an overall process for measuring search marketing successes.
It was great to see ‘measurement’ taking such a prominant role at a one day event with around 70+ people at this session. For me the key take away was – whatever you use you your web site for, measure and understand its traffic.
A separate though very interesting session was ‘Ad Agencies and Search‘. Damian Burns from Google presented some novel ideas that had been used by some of the more pro-active media agencies integrating search with off-line campaigns. For example in his Pontiac demo, the tv campaign ended with a call for the viewer to go and search online for what people are saying [...]

Welcome to Avinash Kaushik who joins the Google Analytics team.
Based at the Goopleplex in Mountain View, Avinash will ”work with Google Marketing and assist them with internal analytics for their marketing programs. I’ll also be working with the Google Analytics team on assignments that span speaking, web analytics education and evolution of the GA tool.”
http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/2007/03/next-stop-wonderland.html
For those that don’t know Avinash, he is one of the industry’s leading evangelists and web analytics bloggers (spending up to 20 hours per week on his blog! ). As Director of Web Research & Analytics at Intuit, he literally built that team from scratch into a world class web analytics outfit.
If you want to catch up with him, Avinash will be with me at eMetrics London 29/30th March. I hope I don’t have to present after him – its a tough act to follow!

As usual I will be at SES London this year speaking at a couple of relavent sessions. Feel free to come over and say hello…
A highlight for everyone has got to be the keynote conversation with Matt Cutts on the Wednesday, though I wonder if the “cat woman” will be there again…