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Google has launched some new features for the Google Analytics API. These include support for advanced segments and 48 new metrics around goal performance, as well as goal configuration data.

"With advanced segmentation, you can look beyond your aggregated data and peer into the nuances of traffic and visitor activity on your site," says Nick Mihailovski of the Google Analytics API Team. "For example, the average time on site for all visits could be 60 seconds, but when you segment by country, you might learn that average time on site of visits from Germany is over 2 minutes."

Google has added two new ways to use advanced segments through the API including creating them on the fly by specifying their expression directly through an API query and using advanced segments created in the Google Analytics web interface through the API.

The following video shows how to work with goal configuration data in the API.

Google has also added 10 new dimensions to access custom variable data and each one that is used is available through the account feed.

Google has updated all of its documentation for the API, and is encouraging the continued feedback of users.

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Google announced a new set of features for Google Analytics at SES Chicago. New features include annotations, custom variables in advanced segments, custom variables in custom reports, a new analytics tracking code setup wizard, and a new version of the analytics API.

The Annotations feature lets any user with access to a Google Analytics profile leave shared or private notes on the "over-time" graph. The idea is that staff can note certain spikes and dips in traffic that may be hard to explain when looking at the broad picture. For example, if the servers went down, a new campaign launched, when a redesign went live, etc. It’s just a way of keeping things organized and accounted for.

"Building upon the concept of bringing Intelligence to data, Annotations complements existing anomaly detection by capturing the tribal intelligence of your company, which tends to be the most expensive and easily lost resource of all," the Google Analtyics team says. "A simple note from a colleague can save hours of real work (and frustration) for an analyst who is tasked to explain a usually dry set of numbers. This short video will show you how to use Annotations."

Back in October, Google announced Multiple Custom Variables. Until now, the only way to view metrics on them was to open the "Custom Variables" report in the Visitors section. Now, you can create an advanced segmentation based on any key, value, or key-value combination of all custom variables.

"In other words, if you’ve created a Custom Variable such as ‘Logged In Member’, you can also create an advanced segment based on that variable and see it across all of your reports," says Google.

Custom Reports can also be created with any of the key or value dimensions assocated with any custom variable. You can see how a segment defined by custom variables behaves along any of the metrics available in Google Analytics.

The new tracking code set-up wizard automatically generates tracking code according to the setup options you specify.

Finally, the new Analytics API will feature support for advanced segmentation, and will include access to new data dimensions and metrics, including those in Google’s other recently announced features for Analytics. Google says there will be a separate announcement for the API later this week, so expect to find out more about what it has to offer soon.
 

Related Articles:

> Google Analytics Gets a Bunch of New Features

> Correcting Your Web Analytics Mistakes

> Google Adds Heavily Requested Features to Analytics API

Google has released several new features for Google Ad Planner. Google says these are aimed at providing a more granular view of where your audience can be found. Features include subdomain data, ad placements, and reach and relevance at a glance.

When Google says reach and relevance at a glance, it is referring to a new interactive graph feature, which lets advertisers see which sites in their plan provide the best reach and relevance.

"In its default setting, the graph will compare sites in your search results by audience reach and composition index," explains Google’s Katrina Kurnit. "Sites with the most reach will appear in the top-left quadrant. Sites with the most relevance will appear in the bottom-right quadrant. Sites near the top-right quadrant will have the best combination of both reach and relevance."

Users can customize the graph in a number of different ways. The feature is discussed in more detail on this page.

 Google has added subdomain data that gives you more detailed views of sites. It can help users refine their media plan by providing more info on specific pages. It lets usres search for subdomains, view the top subdomains based on total domain traffic for a site, view traffic, demographics and other data for the subdomain itself, and add subdomains to their media plan.

The Ad Placements feature consists of specific sections of a site where advertising can be purchased. This feature allows advertisers to review placement data for sites in the Google Content Network, and beta test publishers using Google Ad Manager. Google says more placement data will be coming soon.

Google says publishers and site owners can now use Google Ad Planner to share more Google Analytics data points like page views, unique visitors, total visits, average visits per visitor, and average time on site.

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Google announced a number of new and upcoming features for Google Analytics today. The features, Google says, focus on three things: power, flexibility, and intelligence.

It is the intelligence aspect, which Google places the most prominence on, and this comes in the form of a feature called "Analytics Intelligence," which will provide users with automatic alerts of significant changes in the data patterns of their site metrics and dimensions over daily, weekly, and monthly periods. Users can be notified by email or right within the Google Analytics user interface.

Google has also added goals for "time on site" and "pages per visit," as well as the ability to define up to 20 goals per profile. Here’s some more on that:

Google Analytics now tracks mobile websites and mobile apps so you can better measure your mobile marketing efforts. They will be adding a code snippet for users to add to their mobile sites. PHP, Perl, JSP, and ASPX sites will be supported.

"iPhone and Android mobile application developers can now also track how users engage with apps, just as with tracking engagement on a website," says Dai Pham of the Google Analytics Team. "What’s more, for apps on Android devices, usage can be tied back to ad campaigns: from ad to marketplace to download to engagement."

They have also added Advanced Table Filtering, which allows you to filter the rows in a table based on different metric conditions. Here’s more on that feature:

Now when you create a Custom Report, you can select Unique Visitors as a metric against any dimensions in Google Analytics, and they are also adding multiple custom variables to the tracking API and making it easy to share Custom Reports and Advanced Segments.

Google says that it will be going into more detail on the new features in the coming days on the Google Analytics Blog. The features will be appearing in Google Analytics accounts gradually over the coming weeks.

Google recently launched a new Internet statistics site, called simply "Google Internet Stats." The site provides industry data from third-party sources for use in research.

Categories covered on the site include technology, consumer trends, media consumption, media landscape, and macro economic trends. Each of these has several sub-categories. For technology, you can see data on broadband, devices, mobile, and speed. For consumer trends, you can look at data for community, entertainment, information, and eCommerce. For media consumption, you can look at changes in media usage, demographic usage, media consumption rates, media multi-tasking, personalized media, and experiences. For media landscape you can look at either all media or just online, and for macro economic trends you can look at the UK or the rest of the world.

The site is only available in English, and covers mostly UK statistics at this point. Google says the information will be updated regularly though, and users can submit stats.

The site uses data provided by: B2Bonline.com, BARB, BusinessWeek, Coke, Commission of the European Communities, Comscore, Core Metrics, Datamonitor, Deloitte, The Economist, eMarketer, Enders Analysis, Eurostat, Film Distributors Association, Financial Times, Forrester, GFK, Google Insights for Search, Greenbee.com, Guardian, HarvardBusiness.org, Hitwise, IAB, IFPI, IMF, Internet Retailing, Internetworldstats.com, JP Morgan, KMPG, Media & Marketing, Mediascope Europe, Mindshare, Motorola, Net Imperative, New York Magazine, Nielsen, NMA, Ofcom, Ipsos MediaCT, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, QuickPlay Media Inc., Retail Week, Reuters, TGI Net, Times Online, TNS, Verdict Research, Wall Street Journal, WARC, YouTube, ZenithOptimedia, and GM.

"We think the Consumer Trends section will be particularly useful…" says Evelyn O’Keeffe of the Google Analytics Team. "Take a look at what your website visitors and customers are doing online and think about adapting your site design/advertising to suit their behaviours."

She also throws out a reminder that Google has an Insights for Search tool, which can keep marketers and webmasters up to date on the latest search trends. We’ve talked about this tool in the past here.

Google announced today that users tracking events on their site using Google Analytics can now define advanced segments to isolate event-related sites. The company points to an example of looking at how visits with events compares to visits overall.
"The variety of event related segments that you can create is only limited by the event details you track," says Alden DeSoto of the Google Analytics Team. "So, if you track video interactions, you can create segments that only include visits during which videos were viewed."

Watch the following clip to get a better grasp:

To define advanced segments to isolate event-related visits, you would define one that only includes visits with events (set "total events greater than 0" for your condition), then make it active. Then you’ll be able to compare All Visits vs. Visits with Events in your reports.

Google has an event tracking guide set up that goes through set-up, the anatomy of event tracking, and implementation considerations. This document should pretty much provide you with all you need to know on the subject.