Google Analytics is getting some updates.
For one, there’s a new “Customize” button in the action bar on all tabular standard reports. When you click this, it loads the custom report builder. Google suggests using this for the following cases:
- New metrics, familiar reports – The best metrics are the ones that provide actionable insights into your business. Try adding different metric groups to your favorite reports to see if how it impacts your view of conversion rates.
- Drill down into your data – Sometimes, the best route to a particular piece of data is a drilldown not found in any standard report. You could customize the Language report to drill into search terms for a language-by-language comparison of your organic search traffic.
- Filter to find insights – Ad campaigns can span many networks. Try customizing the AdWords Campaigns report and applying a filter for Ad Distribution Network matches “Google Search” to see your performance on only Google Search.
Note that not all standard reports can be turned into custom reports – only the ones where you see the customize button.
Here’s the step-by-step process for customizing standard reports, as Google lays out in its help center:
1. Open the report you want to use as the basis for a custom report.
2. Click CUSTOMIZE above the report title.
3. Under General Information, enter a new name for the report.
4. Under Report Content:
– Name: Enter a name for the tab.
– Type: Click Explorer to create a new version of the Explorer tab. Click Flat Table to create a data table.
– Metric Groups: (Explorer) Enter dimension names and select metrics; (Flat Table): add dimensions and metrics.
– Dimension Drilldowns: Select the dimensions you want to drill in to, for example: Continent, Country/Territory, and City.
5. Under Filters, select the metrics by which you want to filter.
6. Under Profiles, add additional profiles to which the report is available.
7. Click Save.
Separately, Google Analytics is adding some search engines to organic reports, according to Daniel Waisberg at Search Engine Land, who says he’s confirmed as much with Google. The search engines: rakuten.co.jp, biglobe.ne.jp, goo.ne.jp, and startisden.no/sok. Additionally, he says, search.conduit.com, search. babylon.com, search-results.com, isearch.avg.com, search.comcast.net, and search.incredimail.com will also be added to the default list of known search engines.
According to Waisberg, the company has also changed how GA recognizes search engines. “Before this change, if a URL contained the word ‘search’ and a query parameter ‘q’, Google would attribute it to the search engine search.com, which led to inaccurate reports, especially as a consequence of big customized search engines, such as Conduit, Babylon and others,” he reports.
This week, Google also launched Analytics in 9 new languages, including: Arabic, Croatian, Hebrew, Hindi, Latvian, Romanian, Serbian, Slovenian, and Ukrainian.
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