Google Analytics is one of the best free web analytics tools around and each year it gets just that little bit better. The latest additions have something for both the power user and the casual ‘I’m not sure what I’m doing here’ user.
For the power user – that is, those that get their hands dirty and dig deep into the statistics – you can now perform Advanced Table Filtering, Mobile Reporting, broader Engagement Goals and the sharing of Custom Reports.
What may be of use to those that haven’t ventured into customized reporting is the addition of Analytics Intelligence and Custom Alerts.
Analytics Intelligence:
Analytics Intelligence will provide automatic alerts of significant changes in the data patterns of your site metrics and dimensions over daily, weekly and monthly periods.
This could be quite handy since it will alert you to major changes in site usage. This could be a sudden surge in visitors to a particular page, or the reverse, a sudden drop. It could also be a sudden increase in geographical patterns. For example, indicating a surge of interest from a particular part of the world.
Custom Alerts
make it possible for you to tell Google Analytics what to watch for. You can set daily, weekly, and monthly triggers on different dimensions & metrics, and be notified by email or right in the user interface when the changes actually occur.
This can be particularly useful if you are targeting a particular page. The alert will tell you when the number of hits to the page suddenly increases, and of course, when the number of hits suddenly drops.
Website analytics are an important addition to any webmaster’s toolkit. The information provided can tell you if your SEO strategies are successful. They are also useful to gauge the success of any changes you make to your SEO strategies. You can read the full report on the new additions to Google Analytics on their official Analytics blog.
