google analytics

Google Analytics recently rolled out the new “Intelligence” section of Analytics – adding more features to how we track and manage web conversions.  I thought I’d take a few minutes to show you the basics on how to set them up and why you might want to use them.

The more we know about our web site’s performance, the better we can plan for upcoming drops in traffic (based on past trends), or prepare for increased traffic with successful marketing campaigns.

Annotations can be an effective tool in placing reminders right into your analytical data that you can refer back to when pulling historical data.  A couple of examples of where you might do this:

• Large/Sudden drop in traffic due to perhaps a power outage – note the power outage so a year from now when you look at historical date you remember that.
• A jump in traffic could be due to an email campaign, press release, blog post, new product intro – note the specific event in your Google analytics account.
• When you are working with tools like Google AdWords you often make budget changes, create new Ad Groups, pause Ad Groups.  Creating an annotation is a good idea to track these events.
• Perhaps you launch a full site redesign that includes all new content that will need to be re-indexed by the search engines.  Create an annotation.

There are many reasons to create annotations in Google Analytics as they are quick ‘at-a-glance’ checkpoint when looking at your data.  Below is a quick snap-shot of annotations and how to create them.

The above image shows the same data point and how to view/create annotations.  Here’s the breakdown:

Image A shows the data point (date) where there was a jump in traffic.  Notice in the image the little thought bubble at the bottom. This is the indicator that lets you know there is an Annotation associated with that date.

Image B shows what you will see if you mouse-over the annotation bubble.  It shows you the date, how many site visits on that date, and how many annotations have been created for that date.  (If you have clicked on that, you’ll see your annotations just below this graph).

Image C is what you see when you click on the annotation bubble – this is where you get the option to “Create New Annotation.”

Once you’ve clicked on “Create New Annotation” you have the option to insert text associated with the event you want to track for that date.  (See image below)  It’s pretty straight forward – just put in a very brief description of the event you are tracking.  “BLOG POST:  Creating Google Annotations” would be the description I would create if I created one for this post.   Save it, and your done!

Creating Annotations in Google Analytics

I am finding Google Analytics Annotations to be a good tool to use when doing specific tasks related to Social Media tasks.  I know we use monitoring and tracking tools for Social Media, and Google Analytics was not built specifically for that, but often times customers want that quick ‘at-a-glance” view of how things are going, how a Facebook change may have been successful or generated new fans, if a blog post drove traffic to your site, etc.

I hope this was helpful.

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