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“Not provided” – Organic search terms now blocked by Google
An odd announcement form the GA product team was made last night that affects all users of web analytics tools: When a signed in user visits your...
Want to work with Brian Clifton? Google Analytics Account Manager, Sweden
My company is looking for a smart GA person to join the Swedish office and work with me as a Google Analytics Account Manager. If you have the...
Win a signed copy of Advanced Web Metrics
If reading a physical book like mine is your thing, that is, rather than trawling through online documentation (that may or may not be correct)...
Google Analytics and the new EU privacy law #2
Lots of interesting discussion sparked by my last post on the new EU privacy law, so I thought it worth while to follow up and clarify a few...
Google Analytics and the new EU privacy law #1
Following new EU laws aimed at protecting the privacy of online users, there has been much said about the death of web tracking as we know it. At present the wording of the law is stating that visitors to your website must explicitly consent to having cookies stored on their computers. As pretty much all web analytics tools reply on cookies for visitor tracking, there are clearly implications for anyone that uses these on their site...
Google Analytics – Customisations you cannot live without #2
There are 2 main things that Google Analytics cannot do:
1. No regionalisation of Search Engines for SEO - previous post
2. No automatic tracking of file downloads and outbound links – this post…
The first is an major limitation for Search Marketers requiring regional search engine detail for SEO campaigns; The second is a real pain in the bum for webmasters of content heavy websites who need to track non-standard click throughs (file downloads, mailto, outbound links).
However, Google Analytics is a very flexible product and a little bit of custom JavaScript can go a long way – so I have developed JavaScript “extensions” to over come these limitations…
Google Analytics customisations you cannot live without #1
There are 2 main things that Google Analytics cannot do:
1. No regionalisation of Search Engines for SEO – this post
2. No automatic tracking of file downloads and outbound links - follow-up post
The first is an major limitation for Search Marketers requiring regional search engine detail for SEO campaigns; The second is a real pain in the bum for webmasters of content heavy websites who need to track non-standard click throughs (file downloads, mailto, outbound links).
However, Google Analytics is a very flexible product and a little bit of custom JavaScript can go a long way – so I have developed JavaScript “extensions” to over come these limitations…
The FTC Privacy report “Do Not Track” – a missed opportunity
As readers of this blog will know, I am a strong advocate of online privacy... That may sound strange coming from a web analytics evangelist. However, if we as an industry do not sort these privacy issues out, there is a real danger that web analytics as we know it today will disappear completely.
So, following the recent excellent post from Phil Kemelor on The FTC Privacy Report, “Do Not Track” Options and Web Analytics, I wanted to also add my take here...
Improving a website *without* Web Analytics – a case study
Improving a website without web analytics may sound odd coming from a data analyst, but its quite a common occurrence for me, and in fact, part of my day job as a website performance consultant.
Following John Ekman's guest post on the two types of personas he has observed in this industry (Conversionistas are from Venus and Metrics people from Mars), I started thinking about how best to illustrate these. I consider myself a HYBRID - part conversionista and part metrics person (may be 50:50), and this case study illustrates the conversionista side of my work...