Tag Archives: Google Analytics

Use Smart Goals, powered by Google Analytics, to optimize in AdWords

To advertise smart, you have to measure smart.  And a key metric for almost any business is conversions, also known as “that moment when users do the thing that you want them to do.”

Many AdWords advertisers are already measuring their website conversions, using either AdWords Conversion Tracking or imported Google Analytics Ecommerce transactions.  Measuring actual conversions is ideal, because it allows you to optimize your bids, your ads and your website with a clear goal in mind.

However, hundreds of thousands of small and medium businesses aren't measuring their website conversions today.  Some businesses may not have a way for users to convert on their website and others may not have the time or the technical ability to implement conversion tracking.

The Google Analytics team is committed to helping our users use their data to drive better marketing and advertising performance.  So, for businesses that don’t measure conversions in AdWords today, we’ve created an easy-to-use solution: Smart Goals. Smart Goals help you identify the highest-quality visits to your website and optimize for those visits in AdWords.
"Smart Goals helped us drive more engaged visits to our website. It gave us something meaningful to optimize for in AdWords, without having to change any tags on our site. We could tell that optimizing to Smart Goals was working, because we had higher sales than usual across our channels during the testing period." - Richard Bissell, President/Owner, Richard Bissell Fine Woodworking, Inc

How Smart Goals Work

To generate Smart Goals, we apply machine learning across thousands of websites that use Google Analytics and have opted in to share anonymized conversion data.  From this information, we can distill dozens of key factors that correlate with likelihood to convert: things like session duration, pages per session, location, device and browser.  We can then apply these key factors to any website.  The easiest way to think about Smart Goals is that they reflect your website visits that our model indicates are most likely to lead to conversions.

Step 1: Activate Smart Goals in Google Analytics

To activate Smart Goals in Google Analytics, simply go to the Admin section of your Google Analytics account, click Goals (under the View heading) and select Smart Goals.  The highest-quality visits to your website will now be turned into Smart Goals automatically.  No additional tagging or customization is required; Smart Goals just work.

To help you see how Smart Goals perform before you activate them, we’ve built a Smart Goals report in the “Conversions” section of Google Analytics.  The behavior metrics in this report indicate the engagement level of Smart Goals visits compared to other visits, helping you evaluate Smart Goals before you activate the feature.
Step 2: Import Smart Goals into AdWords

Like any other goal in Google Analytics, Smart Goals can be imported into AdWords to be used as an AdWords conversion.  Once you’ve defined a conversion in AdWords, you’re able to optimize for it.
Step 3: Optimizing for Smart Goals in AdWords

One of the benefits of measuring conversions in your Adwords account is the ability to set a target cost per acquisition (CPA) as opposed to just setting a cost per click (CPC).  If you aren’t measuring actual conversions today, importing Smart Goals as conversions in Adwords allows you to set a target CPA.  In this way, you’re able to optimize your Adwords spend based on the likelihood of conversion as determined by our model.

Smart Goals will be rolling out over the next few weeks. To be eligible for Smart Goals, your Google Analytics property must be linked to your AdWords account(s).  Learn how to link your Google Analytics property to your AdWords account(s) in the Analytics Help Center or the AdWords Help Center.  Note that your Google Analytics view must receive at least 1,000 clicks from AdWords over a 30-day period to ensure the validity of your data.

Posted by Abishek Sethi, Software Engineer, and Joan Arensman, Product Manager

Source: Inside AdWords


Use Smart Goals, powered by Google Analytics, to optimize in AdWords

To advertise smart, you have to measure smart.  And a key metric for almost any business is conversions, also known as “that moment when users do the thing that you want them to do.”  

Many AdWords advertisers are already measuring their website conversions, using either AdWords Conversion Tracking or imported Google Analytics Ecommerce transactions.  Measuring actual conversions is ideal, because it allows you to optimize your bids, your ads and your website with a clear goal in mind.

However, hundreds of thousands of small and medium businesses aren't measuring their website conversions today.  Some businesses may not have a way for users to convert on their website and others may not have the time or the technical ability to implement conversion tracking.

The Google Analytics team is committed to helping our users use their data to drive better marketing and advertising performance.  So, for businesses that don’t measure conversions in AdWords today, we’ve created an easy-to-use solution: Smart Goals. Smart Goals help you identify the highest-quality visits to your website and optimize for those visits in AdWords. 

"Smart Goals helped us drive more engaged visits to our website. It gave us something meaningful to optimize for in AdWords, without having to change any tags on our site. We could tell that optimizing to Smart Goals was working, because we had higher sales than usual across our channels during the testing period."

- Richard Bissell, President/Owner, Richard Bissell Fine Woodworking, Inc

How Smart Goals Work

To generate Smart Goals, we apply machine learning across thousands of websites that use Google Analytics and have opted in to share anonymized conversion data.  From this information, we can distill dozens of key factors that correlate with likelihood to convert: things like session duration, pages per session, location, device and browser.  We can then apply these key factors to any website.  The easiest way to think about Smart Goals is that they reflect your website visits that our model indicates are most likely to lead to conversions. 

Step 1: Activate Smart Goals in Google Analytics

To activate Smart Goals in Google Analytics, simply go to the Admin section of your Google Analytics account, click Goals (under the View heading) and select Smart Goals.  The highest-quality visits to your website will now be turned into Smart Goals automatically.  No additional tagging or customization is required; Smart Goals just work.  

To help you see how Smart Goals perform before you activate them, we’ve built a Smart Goals report in the “Conversions” section of Google Analytics.  The behavior metrics in this report indicate the engagement level of Smart Goals visits compared to other visits, helping you evaluate Smart Goals before you activate the feature.

Click image for full-sized version


Step 2: Import Smart Goals into AdWords

Like any other goal in Google Analytics, Smart Goals can be imported into AdWords to be used as an AdWords conversion.  Once you’ve defined a conversion in AdWords, you’re able to optimize for it.

Click image for full-sized version

Step 3: Optimizing for Smart Goals in AdWords

One of the benefits of measuring conversions in your Adwords account is the ability to set a target cost per acquisition (CPA) as opposed to just setting a cost per click (CPC).  If you aren’t measuring actual conversions today, importing Smart Goals as conversions in Adwords allows you to set a target CPA.  In this way, you’re able to optimize your Adwords spend based on the likelihood of conversion as determined by our model.

Smart Goals will be rolling out over the next few weeks. To be eligible for Smart Goals, your Google Analytics property must be linked to your AdWords account(s).  Learn how to link your Google Analytics property to your AdWords account(s) in the Analytics Help Center or the AdWords Help Center.  Note that your Google Analytics view must receive at least 1,000 clicks from AdWords over a 30-day period to ensure the validity of your data.

Posted by Abishek Sethi (Software Engineer) and Joan Arensman (Product Manager)

Digital Analytics Association San Francisco Symposium: ‘Tis the Season for Data

The fourth annual Digital Analytics Association (DAA) San Francisco Symposium is coming up! Join us on Tuesday, December 8th as we host the symposium at Google’s San Francisco office. This year’s event is focused on how all businesses use data to optimize, personalize, and succeed through the holidays. 


Our lineup of great speakers includes:
  • Jim Sterne, Target Marketing and the DAA
  • Kristina Bergman, Ignition Partners
  • Adam Singer, Analytics Advocate, Google
  • Prolet Miteva, Senior Manager Web Analytics Infrastructure, Autodesk
  • Joshua Anderson, Senior Manager Analytics, BlueShield
  • Michele Kiss, Senior Partner, Analytics Demystified
  • David Meyers, Co-Founder/CEO, AdoptAPet
  • and other great speakers

Theme: Optimization, personalization, and how to succeed through the holidays
When: Tuesday, December 8th, 2015. Registration starts at 12:30. Program runs from 1:00 to 5:30, followed by a networking reception. 
Where: Google San Francisco, 345 Spear Street, 7th Floor, San Francisco, CA 94105
Cost: $25 for DAA members/$75 for non-members
Event website and registration: register here

Space is limited so register early!

San Francisco locals, this Symposium is organized by local DAA members and volunteers. We encourage you to become a member of the DAA and join our local efforts. Become a member and reach out to one of the local chapter leaders, Krista, Charles or Feras.

Happy Holidays!

Posted by Krista Seiden, Google Analytics Advocate

How to improve your AdSense performance with Google Analytics

Want to freshen up the AdSense performance on your site? Google Analytics can help. Here are some simple and effective places to start.

1. Find out where to focus

Content Groups let you bundle your offerings to analyze them more clearly. Instead of analyzing all shoes at once, for instance, a shoe company might divide content into shoes for adults and kids, for men and women, or by tennis shoes and high heels. You can view and compare aggregated metrics by group, or drill down to any individual URL or page title.


Suppose you want to know: What topics have the best AdSense CTRs?
  • Group content by topic (such as food, politics and sport)
  • Use the AdSense Pages report to view metrics
Once you learn which topics have the best clickthrough rates, you could then focus on creating more content for those topics.

Suppose you want to know: Which product groups have slow-loading pages?
  • Group products by type (such as shirts and shoes)
  • Use Page Speed reports to look at page load performance
Are some pages very slow? You might focus on fixing uncompressed images to improve the user experience (and your AdSense revenue).

Content Groups are easy to set up. Learn how to create them and then follow these best practices from Google Analytics evangelist Justin Cutroni.

2. Understand where your users arrive and leave

A Landing Pages report can show you how engaged visitors are with your content. You can analyze individual pages or the Content Groups we just talked about.
Suppose you want to know: What pages cause visitors to leave?
  • Look for pages with high bounce rates, this usually indicates content that isn't appealing to visitors or is irrelevant to their needs
  • Try changing the headline of your article or finding better images
  • You may also want to analyze the page speed for pages with high bounce rates; visitors may be giving up on a very slow-loading page 
Both Content Groups and Landing Page reports can help you find underperforming pages on your site and take action to fix them.

3. Get to know your users 

Demographics and Interests data helps you understand the age and gender of your users, as well as their interests based on their online browsing and buying.


Suppose you want to know: How old are my visitors?
  • Try Demographics Report > Age  
  • Check the bounce rate: if it’s high, consider changing the headline or the visuals to make your pages more relevant and engaging for your target audience
Suppose you want to know: What are my users interested in?
  • Try an Interests report
  • Then shape your content based on the user interests you see; if viewers of you tech blog are interested in photography, try publishing more articles on that theme
To get started with the Demographics and Interests reports, enable them in your Analytics account.

The key to making your site better is to jump into the data, have fun, and experiment. Find out what works and do more of it. Have any ideas to share about using these reports? Add them in the comments below!

Not yet an AdSense user? Sign up now!


Posted by Stephen Dunleavy
AdSense Analytics Expert

Source: Inside AdSense


Engagement Jumps 30% for Wyndham Vacation Rentals With Help from Google Analytics Premium

Wyndham Vacation Rentals runs 9,000 North American rental properties from the mountains of Utah to the beaches of South Carolina.  As you can imagine, that many guests and destinations creates some interesting challenges for Wyndham's online booking system.  

They turned to Google Analytics Premium and Google Tag Manager for help, and we've just published a new case study showing the results. (Spoiler alert: property search CTRs are up by 30%.)

Wyndham did some very clever things with both tools. For instance, they used Google Tag Manager to implement Google Analytics Premium Custom Dimensions to capture user behavior around metrics like rental dates and length of stay. Then they used Google Analytics Premium to dig into the details and gather insights. That's how they learned that, while a "good view" is one of the top things customers included in searches, the scenic view attribute actually had a lower conversion rate than other features offered in their suites.  

As a result, Wyndham redesigned its search results to put the properties with the most profitable mix of attributes on the first page. The Wyndham team also learned how far in advance people begin searching for various vacations, and have adjusted their campaigns and spending to match the peaks in demand.

With changes like these, Wyndham's customers are maintaining more interest through all stages of the funnel. Wyndham says its property search CTR has skyrocketed by more than 30%. Here's what Nadir Ali, their Director of eCommerce Analytics, has to say about this success:
“Google Analytics Premium is helping us connect the dots. As a data-driven organization, we strive to approach each business challenge objectively and back our assumptions with data. Google Analytics Premium gives us the flexibility to customize the data we collect in a manner that makes it easy to answer our business questions.” 
We're always happy to see the creative ways partners use Google Analytics Premium and tools like Google Tag Manager. Congrats to Wyndham on some excellent (and ongoing) results.

See the Wyndham Vacation Rentals case study

Posted by Rachel Reader, Google Analytics Marketing

[Infographic] Are you prepared for the busiest quarter of the year?

The holiday season is the busiest time of the year, with shoppers out in full force to gather their holiday gifts, round up their decorations, and treat themselves to something special. 2014 was a record-breaker in terms of ad spend, which goes to show just how important it is that your advertising is as targeted as possible, and that you’re fully prepared for the final, and most lively, quarter of the year.

Check out these stats and tips below which can help you be in tip-top form for the season:
(viewing from mobile? Download it here.)

Not yet an AdSense user? Sign up now!


Posted by Yigit Yucel
Marketing Communications Specialist

Source: Inside AdSense


Cancer.org donations rise 5.4% with help from Google Analytics

The American Cancer Society has been working for more than 100 years to find a cure for cancer and to help patients fight back, get well and stay well. Today, the Society uses a number of websites and mobile apps to provide information on cancer detection and treatment, offer volunteer opportunities, and accept donations. 

The Society knew they were being visited by users with different needs and goals, but it was a challenge to isolate these customer segments and to help them achieve their goals. The Society also wanted to address concerns with the Google Analytics implementation on its sites, monitor how its users changed behavior over time, and remarket to all segments once they were identified. 

In order to find the data and insights necessary to answer the challenges above, the Society partnered with Search Discovery, a Google Analytics Certified Partner. To achieve these goals, they analyzed the website user segments and created personas to represent them. Then, they used segmentation and custom metrics to score each group based on how it was behaving on the website.

To learn how the American Cancer Society and Search Discovery worked together to implement a process to understand, optimize and monitor the overall health of the site for each user segment, download the detailed case study. And if you want to help saving lives, donate today. 




According to Ashleigh Bunn, Director of Digital Analytics: 
“The insights we’ve gained from Google Analytics and working with Search Discovery continue to influence the Society business decisions for the positive. Not only are our marketing decisions well informed, but our digital content is driven by user experience and engagement. We’re looking forward with enthusiasm and optimism.”

Posted by Daniel Waisberg, Analytics Advocate

Progressive Builds a Better Mobile App with Google Analytics Premium

You've probably seen Progressive Insurance's terrific commercials with Flo the enthusiastic cashier. But have you seen their terrific new mobile app?

It's a story of perseverance. Their full site at Progressive.com has been rated as America's best insurance carrier website for more than a decade.1 But a few years back, as consumers shifted to mobile, the company realized it needed to make a whole new push to build a mobile app that matched its customers' changing behavior. They had a mobile app—they just didn't have a great mobile app. 

Progressive recognized to get started, they'd need sophisticated analytics to really understand what their customers wanted most from a mobile experience. They turned to Google Analytics Premium, in combination with other Google measurement tools, for the solution. Features like Custom Reports, Custom Dimensions and the integration with BigQuery let them streamline the app testing process, spot the root causes of app crashes, and simplify user logins.

“The Google Analytics Premium user interface lets us easily understand the consumer experience on apps. Both our IT and Business organizations rely on this data.” — Kaitlin Marvin, Digital Analytics Architect, Progressive Insurance
Google Analytics Premium helped Progressive move fast. Their team lowered app testing time by 20% and boosted successful customer logins by 30%. The result is a mobile app that may not be quite as famous as Flo, but continues the best-in-class tradition that keeps Progressive customers happy and loyal. 

See how they did it: read the full Progressive case study.

1Progressive Insurance, "Keynote Recognizes Progressive Insurance for the 24th Time as Premiere Insurance Carrier Website," March 17, 2015.

Posted by Rachel Reader, Google Analytics Marketing

Share Google Analytics data and remarketing lists more efficiently using manager accounts (MCC)

The following was originally posted on the AdWords Blog.

From monitoring account performance at scale to making cross-account campaign changes, manager accountshelp many of the most sophisticated AdWords advertisers get more done in less time. To deliver more insightful reporting and scale your remarketing efforts, we’re introducing two new enhancements to manager accounts: Google Analytics account linking, and remarketing tag and list sharing.

Access your data with a single link

You can now link your Google Analytics or Google Analytics Premium account directly to your AdWords manager account using the new setup wizard in AdWords under Account Settings. This streamlined workflow for linking accounts eliminates the need to link each of your Google Analytics and AdWords accounts individually.

Click image for full-size version

Now when you import your goals, website metrics, remarketing lists, or other data from Google Analytics, you'll only need to do it once. And whenever you add a new AdWords account to your manager account, it will automatically be linked with the same Analytics properties.

These enhancements save time so you can focus on optimizing your campaigns. You can learn more about linking your Google Analytics account into your manager account in the AdWords Help Center.

Scale your remarketing strategy

Many advertisers are seeing tremendous success re-engaging customers and finding new ones using Display remarketing, remarketing lists for search ads, and similar audiences. To help scale these efforts across the AdWords accounts you manage, you now have options for creating and sharing remarketing lists directly in your manager account from the new “Audiences” view, including any lists imported from Google Analytics or Customer Match.

You can also create remarketing lists using a manager-level remarketing tag and use them across your managed accounts. This eliminates the need to retag your website and manage multiple lists in each AdWords account. If any of your managed accounts have their own lists, they can be made available for use in your other managed accounts.

These enhancements make it easier and faster than ever before to get your remarketing strategy up and running. You can learn more about sharing remarketing tags and lists in the AdWords Help Center.


Posted by Vishal Goenka, Senior Product Manager, AdWords

Share Google Analytics data and remarketing lists more efficiently using manager accounts (MCC)

From monitoring account performance at scale to making cross-account campaign changes, manager accounts help many of the most sophisticated AdWords advertisers get more done in less time. To deliver more insightful reporting and scale your remarketing efforts, we’re introducing two new enhancements to manager accounts: Google Analytics account linking, and remarketing tag and list sharing.

Access your data with a single link

You can now link your Google Analytics or Google Analytics Premium account directly to your AdWords manager account using the new setup wizard in AdWords under Account Settings. This streamlined workflow for linking accounts eliminates the need to link each of your Google Analytics and AdWords accounts individually.
Now when you import your goals, website metrics, remarketing lists, or other data from Google Analytics, you'll only need to do it once. And whenever you add a new AdWords account to your manager account, it will automatically be linked with the same Analytics properties.

These enhancements save time so you can focus on optimizing your campaigns. You can learn more about linking your Google Analytics account into your manager account in the AdWords Help Center.

Scale your remarketing strategy

Many advertisers are seeing tremendous success re-engaging customers and finding new ones using Display remarketing, remarketing lists for search ads, and similar audiences. To help scale these efforts across the AdWords accounts you manage, you now have options for creating and sharing remarketing lists directly in your manager account from the new “Audiences” view, including any lists imported from Google Analytics or Customer Match.

You can also create remarketing lists using a manager-level remarketing tag and use them across your managed accounts. This eliminates the need to retag your website and manage multiple lists in each AdWords account. If any of your managed accounts have their own lists, they can be made available for use in your other managed accounts.

These enhancements make it easier and faster than ever before to get your remarketing strategy up and running. You can learn more about sharing remarketing tags and lists in the AdWords Help Center.

Posted by Vishal Goenka, Senior Product Manager, AdWords

Source: Inside AdWords