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You are here: Home / Analysis / Welcome to the New Google Analytics

Welcome to the New Google Analytics

Posted: May 8, 2007 32 Comments

20070504_nav_menu.pngToday At EMetrics Brett Crosby announced a new version of Google Analytics. Over the next few weeks the Google Analytics team will begin to migrate all Google Analytics accounts to the new version of the application. The changes are significant and, in my opinion, represent a tremendous improvement over the current version. Not that the old version was bad. ;)

We’ve been using the new version with some of our clients for a number of months and the response has been very positive. I think the biggest benefit that our clients have seen with the new version is the Custom Dashboards. This has greatly facilitated daily reporting. Our smaller clients really enjoy the new interface because, once they get used to it, it facilitates analysis.

Learning the new interface will take some time. I’ve written a few short posts about the new features and changes to help everyone come up to speed quickly.

It should be noted that you’ll be able to access the old interface for 30 days.

What Has Changed and What is New

An entirely new reporting interface
New date range selector
Custom dashboards
Emailed reports
Sticky URLs (you can now use use your Back button!)
PDF Report Export with Vector Graphics
New help center

What Has NOT Changed

I know everyone is excited about all the new features in Google Analytics, but it is very important to note what has not changed.

All setup, configuration and administrative functions are still the same. Setting up profiles has not changed. Creating filters has not changed. Adding users has not changed. The enhancements to Google Analytics are primarily to the reporting interface and how data is delivered to you (dashboards and email).

Filed Under: Analysis Tagged With: features, google-analytics, v2

Comments

  1. Ben Krull says

    May 8, 2007 at 9:38 pm

    Thanks for this article, this is a great overview of the new features. I’m really excited about the new landing page segmentation in GA. I’ve gotten used to using it in Omniture so it will be nice to use it on all the other sites we work with that can’t afford Omniture.

    Reply
  2. steve f says

    May 11, 2007 at 4:45 am

    Have you noticed it is now impossible to get the hour by hour report. Even when selecting a date range of one day you do not get the hourly timeline on the x-axis….unless I am mistaken.

    Reply
  3. Justin says

    May 13, 2007 at 6:25 am

    Hi Steve,

    You are correct. There is no way to segment traffic by hour. Google knows about this and hopes to have a fix in place soon.

    Thanks!

    Justin

    Reply
  4. Samay @ Indian Handicrafts says

    May 17, 2007 at 11:40 pm

    We have just installed google analytics on our website. The classic that is the old format
    is much easier for us as we are new to it. The new one is a bit complex.

    Reply
  5. Markus Hübner says

    May 18, 2007 at 5:57 am

    It would help a lot if Google would make a commitment about the privacy. Many companies are concerned about their data and hence not using GA.
    Apart from that, it’s really a very nice upgrade.

    Reply
  6. Justin says

    May 18, 2007 at 9:09 am

    Hi Samay,

    Thanks for the feedback on the new GA. I agree that, at first glance, the old version is easier. But once you start using the new version, and figure out where everything is, you’ll find the new version is not as complex as it seems.

    Justin

    Reply
  7. Justin says

    May 18, 2007 at 9:16 am

    Markus,

    Gald you like the upgrade! Many of our clients have concerns about the security and privacy of their data. I usually send them to the Google Analytics Privacy policy posted on the site:

    http://www.google.com/analytics/tos.html

    Justin

    Reply
  8. Jane Smith says

    May 25, 2007 at 3:14 am

    I think it is a terrible product – despite some clutziness in the old interface I had hourly reports, the ability to look at today’s data as it came in, cross reference by network location, conversion rates on the same table as the other metrics it relies on, world maps with city data available on the first page, all metrics were available on general results tables I did not have to go 3 levels deep to the detail level, I could export all data instead of 100 rows at a time etc etc etc.

    Personally, I find it childish looking with oversized graphics lined up in counter intuitive structures and difficult to read with graphs that read down instead of left right (also meaning they do not fit on the page at one time) and no column summaries… I think it is far inferior to the previous version for anyone who actually needs the deep metrics it offereed and while everyone is impressed with the AJAX features they are not looking at the lost metrics, the lack of proper UI and the inability to get all your data..

    It is a lousy product.. and it is time people who really use it were asked what they thought instead of bloggers and google trainers..

    Reply
  9. Justin says

    May 25, 2007 at 9:01 am

    Hi Jane,

    Thanks for your comment and thoughts. There are actually some solutions to the issues you’ve identified. I’m going to blog about them, but here is some info:

    1. The hourly reporting is a bug and will be fixed.

    2. The export is a bug and Google is working on a fix.

    3. You do not need 3 clicks to get a City level segmentation of your data. There is a “Detail Level:” option below the geo map. Just click city to segment all the data by city. You can then add the ‘city’ segmentation to the dashboard which means it is 0 or 1 click to city data.

    4. The column summaries are now at the top of each table, not the bottom.

    Finally, the old interface is still available for use while some issues are being resolved.

    I’m sorry you don’t like the new interface and think it is childish. We’ve received mixed reviews about the new version, but I still believe it is better. Once a few bugs are fixed it will have 90% of the functionality.

    Also, Google did extensive user interviews to create the new product. They did not simply ask bloggers and GAAC partners. When I had the opportunity to offer feedback on the product I indicated that the tool needed to help people analyze data. That was the biggest need that I saw based on my experience with many, many users. I think the new product helps analysis tremendously.

    Justin

    Reply
  10. Daniel says

    May 31, 2007 at 5:35 pm

    Hi Justin,

    I am gradually getting used to the new interface and on the whole I think it is an improvement. The graphs and some of the text is a bit on the large side, but the ability to pdf & email reports is great.

    However, one thing I really miss (apart from the already mentioned hourly reports) is the ability to cross segment by network location. Do you know if Google are going to reinstate this?

    Reply
  11. Justin says

    June 1, 2007 at 7:41 am

    Hi Daniel,

    That’s a great question. I don’t know if Google if Google is going to re-instate the cross segmentation by network location. I’ll try to find out…

    Stay tuned.

    Justin

    Reply
  12. gene says

    June 28, 2007 at 2:05 pm

    Hi Justin,

    Would you kindly tell me how to export “ALL” keywords from the old version of google analytics to my computer?

    in the new version, when I click traffic source>keywords it shows that I have 140,000 keywords while the old version’s Keyword consideration only reveals a small portion of the 140k keywords. i am interested in getting that 140k keywords into my computer, thanks!!

    Reply
  13. Justin says

    June 28, 2007 at 9:41 pm

    Hi gene,

    In the new version of GA you can adjust the number of rows displayed in the report. You can specify that up to 500 rows are displayed at a time. When you export a report in the new GA then the exported file will contain the number of rows displayed in the interface.

    In the old version of GA, when you export a report, like the keyword report, ALL rows will be exported. It does not matter how many rows are displayed.

    I hope that helps, the question was a bit unclear.

    Justin

    Reply
  14. gene says

    June 29, 2007 at 1:23 pm

    Thanks Justin, let me re-state my question(s)

    what I really want to know is how to get to the page in the old version of Google analytics to export “all” the keyword.

    Is “keyword consideration” page the right place for me to obtain “ALL” the keywords that lead ppl to my page?

    Thanks for taking your time!!

    Reply
  15. Justin says

    July 2, 2007 at 8:07 am

    Hi Gene,

    Unfortunately there is no way to export all rows from any report. The most rows that you can export are 500. This is obviously a limitation of GA and we hope it is resolved soon.

    Justin

    Reply
  16. Paul says

    July 11, 2007 at 12:55 pm

    As the July 18th deadline draws near, I’m wondering if anyone has found work-arounds for the new AJAX interface’s data export issues? Specifically, that the new UI can’t export filtered reports.

    This includes data like:
    * Organic keywords vs. paid keywords
    * Organic engines vs. paid engines
    * Geo-location by Country or City

    Perhaps something we can type in the URL string? A Greasemonkey hack? The export function currently only produces non-filtered data.

    Paul

    Reply
  17. Justin says

    July 11, 2007 at 3:04 pm

    Hi Paul,

    You should be able to export filtered data. I can apply a filter of ‘justin’ to my keywords and export the resulting 7 rows in any format. This is also the case for paid vs non- paid data and geo data.

    Hope that helps,

    Justin

    Reply
  18. Paul says

    July 11, 2007 at 3:29 pm

    Justin,

    Sorry for the confusion. Jump into the new UI, select Traffic Sources > Keywords > Show: ‘paid’ and hit export. You get the ‘total’ not the ‘paid’ report. For any dataset where you filter it using “Show”, I haven’t found a way to export the filtered (‘paid’ or ‘non-paid’) data, only the total.

    Thoughts?
    Paul

    Reply
  19. Paul says

    July 11, 2007 at 5:41 pm

    Justin, an update:

    I dug around for a few hours, scoured some more forums, no luck.

    BUT, then I made an interesting discovery — the bug is in Firefox only! In fact, this functionality is fine in Internet Explorer. By doing the exact same thing, side-by-side in both browsers at the same time, I get the results exported properly from IE but not FF. All this time, it was just a Google/Firefox incompatibility. It just took me a moment of desperation to open up IE and give it a try.

    Reply
  20. Justin says

    July 11, 2007 at 8:39 pm

    Hi Paul,

    Hmmm… It seems to work just fine in FF. I can export ‘paid’ or ‘unpaid’ keywords using FireFox. It may be due to one of your FF extensions.

    Justin

    Reply
  21. Dean says

    July 17, 2007 at 5:25 pm

    Hi Justin,

    I use GA and Omniture side-by-side. I was an old Urchin customer, but then bought Omniture for a year to test it out. I love the GA upgrade by the way. It is now almost as robust as Omniture. Great job!

    Do you have any plans to add path analysis reports to GA so I can see the most common paths through the site and where users are dropping off? Omniture has these reports but I don’t see them in GA.

    Also, the code snippet for GA seems to have a negative impact on browser loading times for our pages, especially on iPhone. Is there a remedy for this?

    Thanks,

    – dean

    Reply
  22. Justin says

    July 17, 2007 at 9:20 pm

    Hi Dean,

    Glad you like the new GA!

    There are some path analysis tools in GA:
    1. If you’re trying to measure a specific process, use the Goal Funnel functionality.
    2. If you’re looking for some basic path info, like the sequence of pages, use the Navigation Analysis tools in the Content reports.

    The JS tracking code _should_ be cached by the browser after the first load, but that depends on the visitor’s browser settings. It could be that there is latency in the GA server. You could try to host the JS on your own server. Just create an urchin.js file on your server and reference it in the tracking code. WARNING: if Google updated the urchin.js you’ll miss out on the updates.

    Maybe it’s slow on the iPhone because of that 2G network :) Speaking of the iPhone, how’s the data look? I’m guessing it’s not too accurate because of the wireless architecture and the routing of data.

    Thanks for reading,

    Justin

    Reply
  23. Kevin says

    September 27, 2007 at 12:26 pm

    Justin,
    I think the new interface for Analytics is very sharp and an improvement on usability. I do miss the hourly reporting at this particular moment very much, any update?
    Thanks
    Kevin

    Reply
  24. Justin says

    October 5, 2007 at 11:22 pm

    Hi Kevin,

    The hourly reporting is back. You can find a link to hourly reporting at in each of the Visitor Trending reports (Visitors > Visitor Trending). It’s located under the narrative which is the textual description of the report.

    Justin

    Reply
  25. Mick says

    December 4, 2007 at 11:27 am

    Only being able to export 500 rows of data – that’s the app killer, not the killer app for me.

    What am I supposed to do if I have 20k rows of data and need to generate a chart? Do the following forty times: – Manually reload the page, select export, select csv, open the new spreadsheet, cut and paste the 500 rows of data into one common worksheet? Come on …

    Reply
  26. Justin Cutroni says

    December 4, 2007 at 9:33 pm

    Hi Mick,

    I agree, the 500 row limit for exports is challenging… Hopefully Google will provide a solution to this issue soon. I have seen some people hack a solution using Excel and VB, but it is definitely a hack.

    Thanks for commenting and thanks for reading.

    Justin

    Reply

Trackbacks

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    […] Welcome to the New Google Analytics — Justin Cutroni a GA authorized consultant at EpikOne notes that V2 is so “radically different than the old reporting interface” that “You may even be lost the first time you log in”. Justin as put up six shorter posts that deal with the new reporting interface, the new data range selector, custom dashboards, email reports, sticky URLs and PDF report export. […]

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  2. Web Analytics from Tracking Techniques » : My 2 cents on Google Analytics 2 » My 2 cents on Google Analytics 2 says:
    May 16, 2007 at 12:55 pm

    […] I have read over at EpikOne that Google is aware and working on bringing this report back. My question is how did they miss this to begin with? Maybe it was a conscious sacrifice they made to support their spiffy new date visualization UI or maybe they just didn’t realize how important it is to see visits by hour, but either way its a serious omission that needs to be fixed. […]

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    […] Jak pewnie wszyscy wiedzą niedawno pojawiła się nowa wersja Google Anlytics. Dość sporo pisał o tym Avinash Kaushik, Justin z EpikOne, w Polsce informację o tym podawał Tomasz Frontczak. Z tej okazji postanowiłem stworzyć krótki videocast, który pokazuje tę aplikację od praktycznej strony, tzn na co powinno się zwrócić uwagę nawet przy podstawowej analizie witryny w Google Analytics.Starałem się, aby videocast nie był zbyt długi, wiec nie wchodziłem za bardzo w szczegóły. Z tego względu osobom, które są już bardzo zaawansowane w web analytics informacje podane w video mogą się wydać zbyt ogólne i podstawowe. […]

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