(Note: this is a recap from 2011. Google is currently supporting this version as of September 12, 2012)
On March 17th Google announced a new version of Google Analytics (You can read the Google Analytics blog announcement here ). Version 5, previewed at the annual Google Analytic User Conference in San Francisco as well as at the Google Analytics blog, introduces significant improvements. It may have been the cause of earlier rumors of Google rolling out a paid analytic solution to compete with Webtrends and Omniture Site Catalyst (Note: Google released Google Analytics Premium since this post). But GA is ubiquitous, with numerous social media, email, and marketing measurement tools that enhance its features, so in my opinion, a new product change of that magnitude would have required a number of steps on Googles part coupled with negating some of Google’s claims about the current benefits of GA. But I digress. 🙂
I looked at a related post from Justin Cutroni, Director at Webshare (which had an announcement itself -- merging with VKI Studios to form Cardinal Path). Justin is author of Google Analytics: Understanding Visitor Behavior (You can see a review of Google Analytics: Understanding Visitor Behavior at Small Business Trends) and Performance Marketing with Google Analytics (with Caleb Whitmore and Sebastian Tonkin). He gave a brief walk through of version five that captures the key differences, which you can see in the above video.
The user interface receives the most notable share of revisions, in an attempt to increase usability and report accessibility. Google revised the flexibility of creating a unique dashboard, as well as the navigation bar. It’s now a two-tier bar, placing reports selections above the graph. Metrics are also above the graph, so there’s less of a need to scroll down unless a deep dive is necessary (which makes sense). The kinds of available reports has been revised, with some eliminated based on user input. The dashboard is more closer to a wiki, with better flexibility for metrics shown and how there are displayed -- a gauge is available, as well as pie charts and tabular graphs. Multiple dashboards can be created. Naming conventions are changes in some cases, such as Sources becoming Incoming sources.
A termcloud feature displays the traffic and page data, so search terms are displayed in a manner similar to a word cloud. Like Justin, I am excited about this feature because it should give casual users a new way to visualize what is working for their site. Blogger should benefit to figure out what words brought visitors to the site.
In the meantime, expect a follow up from me on the features and what I personally like about it soon, as the new version is rolled out.
