GTM & GA
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What’s the benefit of using Google Tag Manager?

What’s the benefit of using Google Tag Manager?

The saying goes, an image is worth a 1000 words, and mine sparked an interesting conversation on Google+ between myself and two of the industry’s most respected minds – Simo Ahava and Stephane Hamel. Essentially, I was asked by Simo to back up my numbers – a fair question. So here is my reply…

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How to Remove Referrer Spam from Google Analytics

How to Remove Referrer Spam from Google Analytics

By data spam, I am referring to spammers and scammers polluting your Google Analytics reports with their junk links in the hope you will say – “Oh what is that? Let’s visit the referral site that is sending us traffic and see who they are”. Of course the purpose is to to drive traffic to their own site for ad impressions, or to push malware down your throat. In this post I show you how to eradicate it.

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Google Content Experiments – A good or bad feature?

I came across this quote: [Google Analytics] “Content Experiments sucks and I will never use it for any of my clients….run away“. My initial response: Whether you like a G product or not, to say that Google’s stats methods are unreliable is silly and lacks credibility. I am no fan of the Google Analytics Content Experiments, but I put my views into context here.

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Calculating your REAL ROI for AdWords

Calculating your REAL ROI for AdWords

The default Return on Investment (ROI) displayed in Google Analytics is misleading:
1: It combines revenue form your transactions and goals. That can lead to double counting e.g. if add-to-cart is also a monetised goal.
2: GA has no idea about what profit margins you operate under – how can it? Google therefore has to assume that *ALL* revenue is 100% profit.

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What is the future direction of analytics? (2012)

What is the future direction of analytics? (2012)

I was recently interviewed by CMSWire. Apart from pointing you to the full article, I thought the questions, expertly posed by Siobhan Fagan, were very relevant. I particularly liked:

What do you see as the future direction of analytics?

I enjoy sticking my neck out on future predictions, so I reproduce my answer to this question here…

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Jumpstart Regular Expression Tutorial for Google Analytics users

If you manage a Google Analytics account, then understanding regular expressions – and how to set them up – is a key part of your job. This tutorial is intended to jump start novice users into the world of regular expressions – specifically from a Google Analytics point of view. […]

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Google Analytics Market Share

There are a number of commentators on the web that purport the level of adoption for Google Analytics i.e. market share. This is a short post to summarise the latest figures that I consider as solid and reliable. If you have conducted a study yourself, or know of other reliable sources of adoption numbers, please share the results in the comments section. I maintain a snapshot of major brands using Google Analytics at….

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