The Scoop of Google Updates to Google Analytics

Google Analytics is a free tool used to track and calculate website traffic, and it’s now improved than ever thanks to some recent updates. If you’re new to Google Analytics, start off by receiving recognizable with and knowledge about its uses in our Beginner’s Guide to Google Analytics.

Staying up to date on the latest and maximum versions of programs and tools you use is significant since these changes can influence their functionality. We’ve battered through the changes to convey you the most significant things to know so read on and get the scoop.

When you use a template, the Goal complex surge is pre-populated with optional values (based on your industry) that you can moreover keep or change as you go during the process. The templates are prepared into four business objectives (Revenue, Acquisition, Inquiry, Engagement) to help you recognize the purpose of each Goal, but you can also create tradition goals to suit your commerce.

The templates you’ll see are based on the Industry Category chosen in your property settings, so you’ll only see templates that are applicable to your business. Also added is a set of 20 new industry grouping. This categorization is now aligned with Google’s web standard for manufacturing vertical classification. Make sure to edit your property settings to make sure you’re using the one that finest explain your business.

Picasa Web Stats in Google Analytics

Picasa Web Albums has an option that lets you to see the detailed visitor stats for your photos. If you go to the Settings page, you can enable "photo tracking". The only thing you need is a Google analytics for tracking the code.

Picasa Web's help center explains that you need to create a new Google Analytics account (not a new Google account) to monitor the Picasa Web Albums photo traffic. After creating the new account, find the account ID that looks like UA-xxxxxxx-y and enter it in the Google Analytics tracking code box from the Picasa Web Albums. "Once the setup is complete, just sign in to Google Analytics and then click View reports to see visitor stats for your photos. It can take up to 24 hours for the Analytics to detect your tracking code."

A similar option is available for the Google Docs, but only for the published documents. While this feature is useful, it's not very easy to use and it's not properly integrated with the Google Docs and the Picasa Web. Showing simple stats, like the number of the views, the top search queries and the referring websites, in a special section of the Google Docs and Picasa Web would be a much better idea.

Add-ons for Disabling Google Analytics Tracking

Google released plug-ins for Internet Explorer 7+, Firefox 3.5+ and Chrome 4+ that disable Google Analytics tracking. Google Analytics is by far the most popular free service for getting statistics about the visitors of a site and it's used by a lot of sites, including this blog. Even if the service doesn't show personal information about the visitors and it only provides aggregated data, some people are concerned that Google can track the sites they visit using a seemingly innocuous Google Analytics script.

Google explains that Google Analytics uses first-party cookies to track visitor interactions, so the data can't be aggregated for all the domains. "The Google Analytics Terms of Service, which all analytics customers must adhere to, prohibits the tracking or collection of [personal] information using Google Analytics or associating personal information with web analytics information."

Those that are concerned about their privacy can install an add-on and permanently disable the script. After installing the add-on, you'll notice that the browser still sends a request for this file: http://www.google-analytics.com/ga.js when visiting a page that uses Google Analytics, but it no longer sends information to Google Analytics.

If a lot of users install the add-on, website owners will no longer have accurate stats, they'll no longer be able to find if their content is popular and what sections of their site still need some work. Even if Google didn't release opt-out add-ons, users could still block Google Analytics by adding an entry to the HOSTS file, but the add-ons make it easier to opt-out.

Google also added a feature for website owners: Google Analytics can now hide the last octet of the IP address before storing it. "Google Analytics uses the IP address of website visitors to provide general geographic reporting. Website owners can now choose to have Google Analytics store and use only a portion of this IP address for geographic reports. Keep in mind, that using this functionality will somewhat reduce the accuracy of geographic data in your Analytics reports. "