In-Page Analytics Improvements in Google Analytics

In-Page Analytics in Google Analytics had a major flaw in attributing the statistics of similar urls in the page. All the similar links will have the same amount of data while viewing through In-Page Analytics tool.

This was persistent for many years and Google Analytics has found a way to fix this issue and give precise statistics for clicks on similar destination links in a given page. In order to make this work two lines of code need to added to the basic tracking code before _trackPageview and enable the enhanced link attribution in the property settings:.

The llustration in the green text furnished below is where the new lines of code

should go in:

var _gaq = _gaq || [];

var pluginUrl =

'//www.google-analytics.com/plugins/ga/inpage_linkid.js';

_gaq.push(['_require', 'inpage_linkid', pluginUrl]);

_gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-XXXXXX-Y']);

_gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);

In addition to the above improvement there are couple of others too.

Read the GA blog post here

For implementation guidelines click here

Automate GA Reports, Create Visualizations and Build Dashboards | API, Apps Script

API & Apps Script Integration in Google Spreadsheet

Google analytics data can be pulled into Apps script supported products such as Google Docs, Sites, or Spreadsheets using GA  API. This integration dramatically reduces the manual work required to pull Google Analytics data and  you can utilize all the great features of Google Spreadsheets, such as easy sharing, collaboration, automation, charting and visualization tools.


Components of Integration

• Application Registration to Generate API Key
• Enabling API in Google Script
• Google Script Installation
• Querying GA Data
• Creating Reports, Automation and Building Dashboards

Benefits of Integration

• Create GA reports using Google spreadsheet
• Define & automate reporting tasks – Minutes / Hours / Days / Weeks / at any specified date
• Access GA data by writing queries in spreadsheet, without logging to Google Analytics UI
• Multiple queries to pull GA data can be made simultaneously  from Google spreadsheet
• Create new visualizations
• Build Dashboards
• Pull any dimensions and metrics easily to the spreadsheet, even the ones that are not available in Google analytics UI
• Kill the limitations of  being able to pull only 2 dimensions at a time

Event Tracking and Virtual Page View Tracking Impacts the Bounce Rate

Enabling event tracking and virtual page view tracking impacts the bounce rate of the web pages. 

Example:
Page A has a bounce rate of 90% before implementing the event tracking for the video displayed in the webpage. Subsequent to the implementation of event tracking code, the page will show a declined bounce rate because Google Analytics started considering it as an interaction event contrary to the consideration of the video as an non-interaction event before event tracking implementation.

This would give an entirely different picture to the client, indeed a wrong notion that the page is performing better now compared to how it were earlier. Fix this the abnormal decline in bounce rate by telling Google to just consider the video as an non-interactive event. For that

Capitalize the fabulous feature in GA event tracking called "non-interaction events", wherein you can mark an event as a non-interaction by passing true as a fifth argument (or, 6th item in the array).

_gaq.push(["_trackEvent", "Category", "Action", "Label", 3, true]);

Adding the piece of code would facilitate Google Analytics to stop counting the event as an interaction and prohibit inclusion of the event metrics in bounce rate calculation.

From Google Analytics Help Page:

Non-Interaction Events

The term "Non-interaction" applies to the final, and optional, boolean parameter that you can use with the _trackEvent() method. This parameter allows you to determine how you want bounce rate defined for pages on your site that also include event tracking. For example, suppose you have a home page with a video embedded on it. It's quite natural that you will want to know the bounce rate for your home page, but how do you want to define that? Do you consider visitor interaction with the home page video an important engagement signal? If so, you would want interaction with the video to be included in the bounce rate calculation, so that sessions including only your home page with clicks on the video are not calculated as bounces. On the other hand, you might prefer a more strict calculation of bounce rate for your home page, in which you want to know the percentage of sessions including only your home page regardless of clicks on the video. In this case, you would want to exclude any interaction with the video from bounce rate calculation.

That's where the opt_noninteraction parameter steps in. Remember that a bounce is defined as a session containing only one interaction hit. By default, the event hit sent by _trackEvent() is considered an interaction hit, which means that it is included in bounce rate calculations. However, when this value is set totrue, the type of event hit is not considered an interaction hit. You can use this fact to adjust bounce rate calculations for pages that contain events. Setting this value to true means: a session containing a single page tagged with non-interaction events is counted as a bounce—even if the visitor also triggers the event during the session. Conversely, omitting this option means that a single-page session on a page that includes event tracking will not be counted as a bounce if the visitor also triggers the event during the same session.

Source: https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/gajs/eventTrackerGuide#non-interaction

Free GA Scripts and API for Automating Reports in Google Docs Presentation, PPT

Elegant, Efficient and Dynamic - this is how I would describe GA APIs capability to pull the desired reports in a flash. Knowing how to make use of the scripts and API to retrieve data is crucial to reduce the time and enjoy the additional data it could facilitate.

Google Analytics Real Time Data Obeys Profile Filters

Real time data reported in GA profiles can be accessed by non-admin users now, and the real time data obeys the filters set in profiles.

Google announced these changes through their blog. Read the blog post here.

Defining the GA API Query Parameters - Google Analytics API

Knowing how to define the API query parameters to pull out the data from Google Analytics profiles is imperative.

The reference guide from Google unfolds the defining methodology required to retrieve data from GA using API powered scripts.

There are two "super-duper" high level roofs containing thicker and thinner branches which you might want to know while dealing with GA API enabled reports. They are

1) Core Reporting API

2) Multi-Channel Funnels Reporting API

Here is the link to the API reporting developer guide

https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/reporting/

GA Report Automation using API Powered Scripts - It's Easy

I came across a highly useful GA script for automating reporting needs of the clients in a quick span of time. It works using GA API key which is available for every one free of cost, and there is indeed a quota restrictions of 50,000 requests/day. For requests exceeding 50,000 there is a payment associated with every additional request. Nevertheless, the 50,000 requests is on the higher side for our needs, and we may not get exhausted with the permissible limit.

I personally tried this and it works incredibly. The good thing is even the dimensions and metrics which are not available in GA account profiles can be pulled using API without any additional customization (but not A to Z which requires code customization). Once we authorize the GA account any profile can be selected from Google docs where the script would be installed, and the need for logging into GA account can be reduced since we can query and get everything from Google docs itself. The needed data can be populated in any named sheet within docs in a short time, and powerful dashboards can be built.

Hope this information is of some help to all GA project needs.

Here is the blog post which talks about the “magic script” and its implementation for report automation using Google Docs.

http://analytics.blogspot.ca/2012/08/automate-google-analytics-reporting.html

GA API console for getting the API key

code.google.com/apis/console

digitalmarketingcontest2012

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