Today at Emetrics, Brett Crosby announced a number of new features and recapped some recent changes to Google Analytics. Here’s a quick video recap of the announcement and some thoughts on the changes.
Specific things that Brett talked about:
The rebranding of Google Analytics consultants as Google Analytics authorized partners.
This was announced on the AdWords blog and on the Analytics blog. Google is unifying their partner programs. The GAAC is gone, now partners are Google Analytics Certified partners. This should help differentiate partner companies from individual passing the GAIQ exam.
The formal launch of the new Async tracking code.
It’s been out for a while but this was the official coming out for the new version of the tracking code. I wrote a about how the async code works and if you should switch. The async code will now be the default for tracking. Check out the blog post for more information about how it works.
The introduction of the Google Analytics Apps Gallery.
Google is creating a place to showcase apps built on the API. I’ve long felt that the marketplace can innovate more than any Analytics company. GA has more or less become a giant data collector. The gallery should help push more development of analytics tools.
The addition of the AdWords ID to the GA API.
It is now possible to pull actual ad and search query information via the API. This is huge, I think it’s going to lead to a lot of innovation in the search tool marketplace. Vendors like ClickEquations can now connect what happened on a visitors site directly back to the AdWords search query and ad variation. Pretty cool.
New AdWords reports.
Google also announced the addition of new AdWords reports to Google Analytics. I think we all agree that the previous reprots were less than good. The new reports offer additional data, like the actual search term, that was not previous available in Analytics.
Brett also spoke about the recently introduced AdWords Search Funnels. This is Google’s crack at AdWords campaign attribution. My buddy Nick dove a little deeper over on the WebShare blog.
While some might look at this list and shrug that there’s not much new I think these changes hint at things to come. Specifically I think the AdWords API announcement is huge. This tells us Google is pulling more and more data into Analytics. How long before we get DoubleClick data and other types of data in Analytics? Or when will they let us import data into Analytics, like cost data?
Overall, a nice little treat for us analytics users. Thanks to the Analytics team and great job.
As always, I welcome your comments!
While some might look at this list and shrug that there’s not much new I think these changes hint at things to come. Specifically I think the AdWords API announcement is huge. This tells us Google is pulling more and more data into Analytics. How long before we get DoubleClick data and other types of data in Analytics? Or when will they let us import data into Analytics, like cost data?
Good summary, for us who don’t follow what’s going on every day this is a good overview of important changes. As an iternet marketing consultant I especially welcome the AdWords reports improvement in Google Analytics, it helps a lot. Thanks fot this summary.