Get ready for the Google Analytics Social Data Hub

You may have heard that Google recently announced a new Social Media Data Hub. This is the nerdy first step in a series of upcoming social media reports that will probably launch in 2012.

Basically, Google will allow social media sites (Digg, Facebook, Twitter, etc.) to send data to Google Analytics. What type of data? Information about who is sharing your content, what content they are sharing, and how they’re sharing it. Basically everything you would want to know about someone talking about your business off of your site.

I’ve read a few of the write-ups and think John Lovett did the best job. You should totally read his thoughts on the new social data hub. Here are a few gems from his post:

Well, I see this as a huge win for marketers, bloggers, publishers and anyone else trying to discern the impact of social media marketing across the multitude of channels and platforms available today.

Google’s new Social Data Hub – coupled with Google’s Social Analytics reporting – has the potential to knock the socks off these unknowing marketers.

If/when Google applies the lens of their analytics tool to this new aggregated data set, look out marketers — you just hit the jackpot!

While the big dogs in social media may take a while to come around, I see this new Hub as a potentially great equalizer for understanding the impact of social media as it relates to referrals for on-site activities which can ultimately lead to conversions and bottom line impact.

If you would like to join the Social Analytics Reporting beta you can sign up here: https://services.google.com/fb/forms/socialpilot/

If you are a social media platform and would like to send you data to Google Analytics you can review the technical specifications here: http://code.google.com/apis/analytics/docs/socialData/socialOverview.html

So get really excited! In 2012 we’ll be able to analyze how people interacts with your content and brand on social networks. Very cool.

The Details Others Missed

But I think there’s a lot more to this announcement than meets the eye.

First, the REALLY big news that I feel has been overlooked is that Google will let other data providers integrate their data into Google Analytics. This is the first time that Google has added a non-Google data source to Google Analytics. (I’m counting Google AdWords as a separate data source, but it’s owned by Google).

Now that’s the big news.

There are some interesting side stories to Google's Social Data hub.

If Google is developing the infrastructure to integrate other well-structured data sources, what’s next? Will they let me import historical data? What about industry benchmark data that I might use to provide context to my website data?

Or how about the ability to import and translate data. For example, maybe I’ll be able to translate product IDs into product names using a standard data import.

Or how about the ability to translate a single campaign id rather than using the standard utm_ campaign tracking parameters (anyone remember utm_id?)?

The ability to import data has been a common request (albeit mostly from enterprises) for a long time. This would be very well received.

The second interesting thing about the new Social Data Hub has to do with privacy. The standard version of Google Analytics prohibits the collection of personally identifiable information. But, according to some of the Google Analytics Social Data Hub technical specifications, Google will require that the username or screen name and the display name appear in the social media data feed.

This could absolutely be PII.

Technical Information about the Google Analytics Social Data Hub

It seems to me that Google may need to change in the standard Google Analytics terms of service.

So at this point we’re left with a lot of questions.

But that’s OK, we’ve got some time to speculate.

NOTE: ideas and opinions above are my own. While I will be joining the Analytics team in January, I have no current knowledge of Google’s master plan

The Google Analytics Social Data Hub – More than Meets the Eye? is a post from: Analytics Talk by Justin Cutroni

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1. How to Import MSN Cost Data Into Urchin
2. Adding Business Data to Google Analytics Data
3. Google Analytics Real Time: Real Time Data for Real Time Decisions

But over the past few weeks Google has rolled out a few other subtle changes to GA that may indicate changes and future enhancements.

1. Easier Login

There’s a new button to log into GA! Awesome, a new BUTTON! Woo Hoo!

Just kidding, while there is a new button, the real benefit is some added functionality that makes it easier for all of us that are in and out of GA on an hourly basis to access into GA.

You will now remain logged into GA even if you navigate away from GA or close your browser, just like you do when using GMail.

This is not a major deal, but I think it ties GA closer to other Google services. Combined with the layout and access changes to Website Optimizer (which is now organized more like GA), I think it moves us one step closer to the Google Business Platform. The same functionality already exists for Google AdPlanner, Google Insight for Search, etc. How long before all these tools are linked together?

2. Revamped Profile List

Google recently added website domain to the list of profiles that appears when you first log in:

While this change may not seem like a big deal, I think it signals a shift in the way that we think about profiles. For a long time I’ve been stressing that profiles are not websites, they are segments of traffic. That’s why we can, and should, create lots of profiles for a single website. This change facilitates that line of thought.

Changing the profile list to include the website URL makes it easier for us to name profiles something more descriptive, like ‘Segment: New Visitors’ or ‘Segment: CPC’. The addition of the domain simplifies profile naming and promotes the use of profiles as segments.

Could this have something to do with segmentation of data or might profiles fundamentally change? I’m not sure, but I know that it’s now a lot easier to organize all of the various profiles that we create for clients.

3. Bye, Bye Segments, Hello Dimensions!

This one came as a complete surprise to me. Google changed the ‘Segment’ drop down to a ‘Dimension’ drop down. The options in the drop down have not changed, and the functionality remains the same.

Does this mean we’ll be doing ‘di-mentation’ rather than ‘seg-mentation’? HA!

Not only did they change the name from Segment to Dimension, but they also changed the location of the drop down. It moved from above the data table to within the data table. This reinforces that we need to start thinking in terms of Dimensions rather than Segments.

Now the important question, why this change?

I’m not sure. But I think this is a pretty big deal. I think this has something to do with the way that we segment data in GA. Given the change to the profile list, maybe segmentation will change into some type of ‘profile mashup’ tool, where you can mix data from different profiles into a single profile in order to do segmentation.

Who knows what will happen, but it’s Friday and I’m having fun with this.

What do you think these changes indicate?

Three GA Changes that Predict the Future is a post from: Analytics Talk by Justin Cutroni

Related posts:

1. Google Analytics: Thoughts on the Future
2. New GA Feature: Sticky URLs
3. Custom Segmentation with Google Analytics

I’d like to mention that this post is purely opinion and speculation. I have no idea what Google’s master plan is for Google Analytics, but I do think that my ideas are possible.

Let’s start by looking at where Google is going as a business. Google’s long term strategy is to become the dominant advertising network on the planet. It’s something that CEO Eric Schmidt has talked about in the past and it make total sense. The more advertising options that Google can offer it’s current customers the bigger the opportunity for growth.

Google’s success relies on the adoption of said advertising tools. Look at AdWords and the insane revenue it generates. Now image if Google could create 3 or 4 more advertising products that are as successful as AdWords. We’ll be looking at Berkshire Hathaway stock prices in no time.

The expansion of Google’s advertising platform began with audio ads and print ads and I’m sure they’re not going to stop there. These new products are simple, thus making them accessible to businesses that may not normally branch out into a new advertising medium. I’ll talk about specific Google advertising products and my thoughts on each in a moment, but what does all this mean to Google Analytics?

No matter what advertising tools Google creates, there needs to be a centralized reporting and analysis component. GA is that piece of the puzzle. It’s no secret that Google wants to create the Google Marketing Dashboard, why not base it on Google Analytics? It makes complete sense, right? GA is a data analysis tool so why not use it to analyze all marketing data? At the very least GA should be the analysis piece of the puzzle.

That’s the long term vision, but what type of integration opportunities exist right now?

The most basic integration is the inclusion of advertising cost data into Google Analytics. Audio cost data, print cost data… it’s natural to think that these will be pulled into GA soon.

The next integration step should be the automatic identification of online traffic that originated with an offline ad. Image if you could automatically create vanity URLs for your audio or print campaigns and have GA automatically track them. We’re already doing this manually, but it could, and should, be automated by Google. This type of integration will further remove IT from the configuration of GA making it easier for all types of organizations to track offline marketing efforts.

Let’s get even more specific.

Google AdWords

No need to talk much about this one. Google is the 800 pound gorilla in the paid search world. AdWords campaigns are automatically tracking in Google Analytics and cost data is automatically imported to compute ROI. Pretty slick. It would be nice if Google could pull in cost data from other paid search vendors, but there are probably too many political hurdles for this to happen.

Google Audio Ads

I mentioned this one above and wrote a post about tracking audio ads with Google Analytics it in the past. I think audio integration is pretty logical. Beyond the cost data, I would like to see some type of map overlay report correlating geographic web traffic and the distribution of audio ads. The addition of automatically created vanity URLs for audio ads would provide a slick way to connect online conversions to the originating audio ad.

Google Print Ads

Print is very similar to audio and I think it’s something we could see soon. Many of the same integration points exist for print ads including cost data, a map overlay of ad distribution and web visits and an automatically created vanity URL for print ads.

Graphic (Banner) Ads

This is another one that could be very close. Once the purchase of DoubleClick is finalized I bet we’re gong to see DoubleClick’s pre-click data rolled into GA quickly. Maybe they’ll add a DoubleClick item to the Traffic Sources menu below the AdWords menu item.

I think we’ll also see an auto-tagging feature for ads displayed on DoubleClick’s network. No more tagging destination URLs. Woo hoo!

Mobile

Everyone loves to talk about mobile tracking. But the fact is that mobile tracking right now is miserable. The inconsistent implementation of JavaScript on mobile devices makes it very hard to track visitors on mobile devices.

Google has taken a big step to improve mobile tracking with the announcement of Android. This isn’t just a mobile browser, it’s a complete platform for mobile devices. It’s also a way that Google can insure that they’re very involved in the future of the mobile web. I’m sure that Google will include some type of mechanism in Android to track visitors.

Video (Google Video & YouTube) Ads

Google is poised to provide some amazing data about how people interact with video. The new Google Analytics Event tracking feature is a logical, structured way to measure visitor engagement with video and video ads. I really hope that event tracking is added to all YouTube videos so we can all measure the performance of video content. Once we know how visitors are engaging video we can choose optimal placement of video ads.

I also expect Google to facilitate the creation of video ads in the same manner they did with audio ads and print ads. Maybe they’ll create a video ad marketplace.

Email Marketing

Google does not have an email marketing solution, but why couldn’t they leverage Gmail and create one? Just add a basic interface where users can upload a recipient list and some type of interface where they can style the email and you have a very effective email marketing tool.

But what about all of those people that don’t use Google advertising tools? What if someone just wants to use GA to measure website traffic? What cool features can they expect from Google?

I think Google’s commitment to GA goes well beyond the integration of advertising data. Google has a vested interest in providing tools that help EVERYONE make the web a better place. Part of Google’s philosophy is to, “Focus on the user and all else will follow.”

Analytics is one of the tools (and the most mature, I might ad) that Google provides so we can all make the web better (Website Optimizer and Google Trends are two others). The more analysis features that Google can pack into GA the more effective we’ll all be at making our sites better.

Case in point, GA version 2. It was a major improvement in analytics UI design that facilitates analysis. Is it perfect? No, of course not. But it really makes analysis easier for everyone. I expect that Google will continue to refine the reporting interface by giving us more data visualization tools and more context for our data.

So what does this mean to other analytics vendors?

I don’t think that any other analytics vendor will be able to track Google based advertising (AdWords, Audio ads, etc.) as well as Google. I know that seems obvious, but it is a big deal, especially when Google becomes the major advertising network on the planet. Google can provide a view of offline ad activity and the resulting online behavior because they will have all the data. Could other providers create similar reporting? Maybe, but it won’t be as easy.

I also believe that we’ll continue to see consolidation. Google has, in my opinion, made web analytics tools (and testing tools) a commodity. Is there still a need for $250,000 web analytics application? Maybe, but I guarantee you people are taking a closer look at GA and evaluating the features that they really need before dropping hundreds of thousands of dollars.

Think I’m nuts? Think OmniSciences will take over the world? Leave a comment and let me know.

Google Analytics: Thoughts on the Future is a post from: Analytics Talk by Justin Cutroni

Related posts:

1. Tracking Google Audio Ads with Analytics
2. Tracking Offline Advertising With Google Analytics
3. Event Tracking Pt. 1: Overview & Data Model