Fast on the footsteps of the feature announcements made at eMetrics in October, and just a week after the announcement of the new asynchronous tracking code, yet another set of announcements came today at SES Chicago. Here’s a brief recap:
Annotations:
We love this one, and after using it for a while, we can’t really remember the life of an analyst without it. Now you can leave notes in the top graph of your reports to explain what happened when, who did what, when that fantastic promotion was blasted out, and anything else you can dream up. Here’s a quick screenshot:
Custom Variables now in Custom Reports & Advanced Segments:
Custom variables, announced just a little over a month ago, are now available for use in Custom Reports as well as Advanced Segments. This is great news since for most folks the announcement made in October meant that you could start collecting data for custom variables, but showing it in your reports was limited to just the standard Custom Variables reports that were rolled out in the weeks after the announcement.
Now, you can use your new custom variables to slice, dice, cut up and show in whatever context you like in custom reports, or define segments on the fly based on your custom variable definitions!
Google Analytics Setup Wizard
Sure, you can slap on the code and start collecting some data, but if you have some advanced installation situations (like crossing top level or subdomains, specific PHP considerations, alternate campaign tags, cases where Urchin is also being used, mobile application tracking, and more), how do you know how to change your code?.
Well, here’s a screenshot of some of the advanced situations where you can use the new Setup Wizard to help you generate customized Google Analytics Tracking Code (GATC), but remember, we always suggest reviewing this code and installation instructions to ensure that it’s going to accomplish exactly what you want it to:
Google Analytics API Updates
There are a number of updates coming to the Google Analytics API, and we’re very excited to see all the ways people start using this new functionality. Here’s one we can share with you early:
Advanced Segmentation is now supported via the Google Analytics API!
Later this week, look for the official announcement of the full new set of updates to the Google Analytics API.
David Booth
David is a co-founder and principal consultant at WebShare. You can find out more about David here.
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