Googlified

Another season, another new design for YouTube. The new design added bigger (but not necessary better) buttons for sharing and bookmarking the videos. It also brings the “Who’s Also Watching Now” into focus, as well as add image buttons () for users to choose between high and low (standard) video qualities.

The YouTube Insight tool got a new feature - Discovery - that allows users to “how viewers found your video, whether by searching on YouTube or Google, browsing under “related videos,” receiving a link to the video from an email or website, or watching it in an embedded player off YouTube.”

Last but not least, the Mac version of the YouTube multifile uploader has been released, you can find it here.

YouTube just released a new tool called YouTube Insight that let’s users to view “detailed statistics” of the videos that you uploaded. You can see statistics like the number of views per day, and break it down by regions. According to the Official Google Blog post, you can find the tool by “clicking under the ‘About this Video’ button under My Account > Videos, Favorites, Playlists > Manage My Videos.” (YouTube won’t let me log into the site right now because they are “performing site maintenance”.)

Sounds pretty cool and Analyticstic!

The Google Analytics Blog announced two new features to the service yesterday, benchmarking and data sharing. The benchmarking feature lets Analytics users to compare their sites’ data to other similar-size sites, either in the same category or in a different category (horizontal & vertical comparison).

However, in order to enable the benchmarking service, the users will need to opt-in to the data sharing program which you agree to share your site’s traffic data with other users, “in an anonymous form, … [with] all identifiable information about your website [removed].” The settings can be found under your account’s “Edit Account” page (”Analytics Settings” -> “Edit Account and Data Sharing Settings”).

I opted-in the program about 30 minutes ago but the benchmarking link isn’t showing up on the sidebar yet, so I guess it will take them a moment.

Google today announced that they will be rolling out a couple of new features to Google Analytics soon. One of the new feature is Site Search Overview (pictured above), allows users of Google Analytics to learn more about how their visitors interact with the sites’ searching functionality (if your site has one), such as what people searched for and where the searches lead.

The other feature is Event Tracking, it measures users’ “engagement with a site’s interactive elements, such as Ajax, Javascript, Flash movies, page gadgets, downloads, and other multimedia Web 2.0 experiences.”Google says that site owners need to update their pages’ tracking script from urchin.js to ga.js in order to use this feature.

Also, Google finally releases Urchin Software, an update version of Urchin 5, which analyzes web server logs and displays traffic information pretty much the way Google Analytics does.

I personally use Google Analytics less and less after they disabled the old interface. Sigh.

[screenshots from Google Blogoscoped]

Do you have a Google Analytics account? And if so, do you find it annoying each day having to log into Google Analytics, and select which site, etc.. until you finally reach those numbers you so desperately seek? I sure do - that’s why I didn’t log into Google Analytics for over 3 months! Here’s a Handy little Dashboard widget (for Mac users only) created by Rob Scriva called Dashalytics (now see how I get to the weird post title?) It shows you all your data and a quick glance, let me show you:

The Main “Page”:

This shows a graph, and the total number of visitors over the following selectable time periods: 1 Day, 1 Week, 1 Month, 3 Months, 6 Months, and 1 Year.

The Break-down view:

Here you can view more data about the visits themselves.

Visitor Data View:

Here you can view the Browser they used and connection speeds.

That was only the visitor’s overview, there’s also a Content Overview, and a traffic sources overview. Trust me - just get this, it’s amazing, it also handles multiple sites.

Download it here.

Christian.

As noted before, Google finally shuts down the old version of the Google Analytics interface, well, not on the 18th as they announced, but the 20th.

They also added a couple of new features over the last couple days:

• Print reports in PDF format
• A “Go to” box that let you jump directly to a specific row in a report
• Map Overlay report view now defaults to Country instead of Subcontinent
• Content reports with more detail

Really sad to see this coming, but there’s really nothing I can do about it, just hope that I will get used to it soon. (I have been using the old version)

Good, Google has added the Hourly Reporting back to the new version of Google Analytics, but it took me several minutes to find it. To view the Hourly Reporting, you will need to go all the way down to the Visits section in Visitor Trending under Visitors. Oh, and you will need to click on the Hourly link as well.

Besides adding Hourly Reporting back, they also made a few improvements to the web analytics service.

• Clickable URLs - Added the ability to click straight through to external pages from links referenced in reports. Just click on the icon next to any link listed in the Referring Sites, Top Content, Top Landing Pages, and Top Exit Pages reports.
• Cross Segmentation by Network Location - Now you can cross segment reports by Network Location.
• AdWords Integration - It’s now much easier to link your AdWords account to your Google Analytics account.

Great - the old interface will be removed on July 18th. :(

For some reason I was on the home page of Site Meter today, and guess what I saw: their new design featuring a screen shot of a chart from Google Analytics! (as you can see above) Isn’t this interesting? :)

I don’t use Site Meter, so correct me if I am wrong…

All the excitements about the new Google Analytics should be now over and let’s face it, it’s not that cool. Google claim that the new user interface will “present data more clearly”, but not in the case with me - it’s way more confusing that the previous version.

Bartheq said in the Google Blogoscoped forum,

The main dashboard graph no longer shows visits and pageviews together. To view the pageviews I have to switch to another graph and it’s impossible to compare the trends. You can only compare another range in the past.

When a single day was selected from the calendar, the graph would switch to 24 hours mode allowing to view hourly activity. Same was with month /showing days/ and year /showing months/. Now the graph always shows last 30 days /for small ranges/ or more and the selected range is highlighted.

There’s no easy way to view the stats for the whole year. In the previous version all it took was one click on the year above month list and now a range has to be entered manually.

Maybe it will take a few days for me to get used to it, but shouldn’t a good product be user friendly even for a newcomer?

The Google Analytics Blog today unveiled the new version of Google Analytics at the Emetrics Summit in San Francisco. The blog post says that the users will be seeing the new version in the next few weeks. Many accounts already have the new interface, so check yours here. If you just want to see the new version, go register yourself a new Google account. :)

So, what’s new and improved?

• User Interface: Redesigned for greater customization and presents data more clearly and in context
• Email and export reports: Schedule or send ad-hoc personalized report emails and export reports in PDF format.
• Custom Dashboard: No more digging through reports. Put all the information you need on a custom dashboard that you can email to others.
• Trend and Over-time Graph: Compare time periods and select date ranges without losing sight of long term trends.
• Contextual help tips: Context sensitive Help and tips are available from every report.

You can find out the improvements in the new version here and a tour of the new features here.

Justin, you have picked the wrong time to ask “Did Google & Jeffrey Veen forget about Measure Map?” Measure Map is what they have been working on to for the new version of Google Analytics. :)