Google Ad Innovations: Analytics Intelligence (Status: Fully Released)
I thought that a discussion on Analytics was a perfect way to end this latest series on Google Ad Innovations. After all, what good would it do to put all these cool features in play if you weren’t going to be able to see how well they were working (i.e. translating into cash flow!)?
With Google Analytics Intelligence, http://www.google.com/analytics/analytics-intelligence.html, your website’s traffic is continually being watched for any significant changes that take place. If something drastic happens (like your bounce rate suddenly jumping because some accidently changed a landing page), you would like to know that right? So you would need to set up an alert. These alerts can be customized for the information you want to see. Within this feature are some very sophisticated algorithms that could allow you to learn of data insights or inconsistencies that you might have otherwise missed or at least not caught right away. Aside from that, this eliminates your need to cipher through tons of data.
Analytics Intelligence filters through it for you and condenses the information you need into an easy-to-understand format that will allow you to implement an appropriate action plan much quicker.
This is definitely a case of time=money. Even better, there is built-in flexibility here that allows you to get data alerts on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis so it suits your needs.
To access this tool, log in to your Google Analytics account (or create one for free if you do not already have one. Analytics Intelligence is a sub-feature within Google Analytics. Here is where you will create your custom alerts. For example, one user from the Google Discussion Forum commented in that he was going to create the following alerts:
“Here are the first 5 custom alerts I’m setting up:
1. When bounce rates for paid search are going up
2. When conversions on a daily basis are higher than normal
3. When the percentage of new visits is less than X
4. When returning visitors are less than X
5. Any significant changes in goal data”
Here’s a link to a great video that helps you learn how to interpret those alerts: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gRvUpoTT-Bo
So no matter what you are looking for, there are a variety of Ad Innovations out there that will enhance the user experience all with the ultimate goal of driving traffic to your site and increasing those conversion rates.
Before I close out this series, I’d also like to take a quick second to talk about some new Ad models that we are also starting to see more of.
I didn’t know you could link analytics to ads like that.. definitely seems like a nice feature. I’ll have to keep alerts in mind.
Also when writing a series like this it might be a good idea to include a link to maybe the first part of the series and in every post to the next part.. I’d definitely go back and read previous posts if I could easily find them.