Google enables Sharing in Google Analytics
To enhance user trust and experience, Google Analytics has recently enabled sharing of Google Analytical Data. The improvement is primarily directed towards providing transparency, choice and improved product experience. This feature will not affect a user’s account in any ways, without the approval of the user for individual product and services.
Google Analytics Data Sharing Program
The user will be able to have full control over the sharing of data with Google as per his preferences. To enable sharing of data, a user has to visit the ‘Edit Account and Data Settings’ page from within the account. The collected data will be used by Google to further enhance Google Analytics and to develop more powerful features and services for the user to choose from. This will further improve user experience and help him monitor and tweak his website performance accordingly. However, only those users who will opt to share their data with Google will be able to take advantage of the future upgrades and services based on this data. This would include the upcoming ‘industry benchmarking’ and an enhanced version of ‘AdWords Conversion Optimizer’.
This new data sharing service will only be available for Google products and services. Furthermore, a user can also opt to be an ‘anonymous participant’. In such a case, Google will remove all information that can be used to identify the user’s website. The collected data, anonymous or otherwise will not affect natural search results, ad quality score or ad placements in any ways.
Benchmarking is an additional Google Analytics service that compares a user’s website statistics against another user of the same category. Although this service is currently in the Beta phase, still it provides variety of comparing vectors. Such as, site’s Visits, Pageviews, Pages per Visit, Bounce Rate, Average Time on Site and New Visits data which Google compares with other participating websites. This service is quite beneficial as it allows a user to request for a statistical analysis of the website and can further improve his own website accordingly. It would take up to two weeks for the data to appear since it would be categorized and collected for the user report.
How to enable industry benchmarking
1. Log into your account (You’ll see the yellow data sharing settings box on the Analytics Settings page).
2. Click the "More data sharing options" link within the yellow box.
3. Select the second check-box to specify that you want to share your data “Anonymously” with Google products and the benchmarking service.
Conversion Optimizer:
It is a tool optionally available within the AdWords. This feature automatically adjusts the user’s bid to maximize conversions at the minimum price possible. This feature is already available to AdWords Conversion Tracking users and relies on a website’s conversion data to operate. Google is planning to release this feature to Google Analytics users as well, provided they participate in the data sharing program.
In order to use Google’s industrial benchmarking service and other conversion-based features, a user has to be a participant in the data sharing program. When a user opts in for the program, Google tracks back data from up to a month before the opt-in date. However, when the user opts-out of the program the data sharing activities cease immediately. The data collected during the participation period will not be removed after a user opts out. However, this hardly makes a difference because when the user isn’t participating in the program, then neither his data is being collected nor is he availing any of the features that come with the data sharing program.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Gerry Grant CEO/Founder Search-Optimization.com, an Orange County Internet Marketing Company, has been actively involved in search engine marketing since 1994. Gerry writes for SOMReport, My Entertainment News, DataGrant Venture Capital News and Buy a Car Review.
April 15th, 2008 at 5:14 am
[...] In an effort to provide further enhancement and simplify Google Analytics for site owners, Google has announced that it has begun Data Sharing activities with Google Analytics users. This service will be optional and will not in any ways affect the user accounts, without the explicit permission of the user. Participating Webmasters will enjoy the benefits of additional Google services like Industrial Benchmarking and Conversion Optimizer. More… [...]