Google Analytics has gotten so many new features in the last year, that the only way I could incorporate those into my Google Analytics plugin, which has been downloaded 1,208,845 times, was by doing an almost complete rewrite. That’s why today, I’m proud to announce version 4.0 of this plugin.

What’s new with this Google Analytics plugin?

Asynchronous tracking

First of all, this new version 4.0 switches to the new asynchronous tracking method. This new tracking was also the reason it took a while to get this version out the door: there were quite a few bugs to work out; tracking by the beta was not reliable for a while.

What’s the advantage of the new tracking you ask? Why bother switching? Well, there are three reasons, as listed by the Google Analytics blog:

• Faster load times for your web pages due to improved browser execution of the tracking code.
• Enhanced data collection & accuracy.
• Elimination of tracking errors from dependencies when the JavaScript hasn't fully loaded.

If you want to know more about asynchronous scripts, check out this blog post by Steve Souders, in which he explains the concept and what it means for page load times. The short version: a normal script blocks other objects on your page, like images, from being loaded until it has been fully loaded. An asynchronous script allows for those other objects to be downloaded at the same time.

Custom Variables

Google launched the custom variable support in October 2009, and I’ve been playing with ways to use these in tracking ever since. Custom variables are a way to add data about the current page, the current session or the current user in your tracking, which you can use for some very cool things.

I've been thinking and working with guys like my buddies Frederick Townes and Justin Cutroni about what you should and could be tracking. It wasn't easy, which is why I’m very proud to show you this settings panel:

Google Analytics Custom Variables

As you can see in the screenshot, you can segment by:

• Logged in users: speaks for itself, very useful on BuddyPress sites etc: where do people that are logged in go, where do others go. It stores the users primary user level in the variable, so you can even segment for just "subscribers". (There's an advanced option to ignore users of certain levels should you want to btw)
• Author name: track page views per author.
• Single category: if your posts are in only one category each, this allows you to track views per category.
• All categories: track multiple categories per post, a bit harder to view in Analytics, but could still be useful.
• Tags: track all tags for each post, has its limits but might be useful.
• Publication year: see what’s doing good and bad, more specifically whether your old posts are still getting traffic.
• Post type: especially with the new custom post type features in WordPress 3.0 this is very useful: if you’ve got movies, actors etc. set up as custom post types, this allows you to track how many page views each post type got.

So you could run reports showing which authors do better, which categories and / or post types get more pageviews and so on. This will provide you with the kind of analysis you need to improve your blog. I hope you’re starting to get why I’m so excited about this release. But wait, there’s more.

Google Analytics API integration

Where in the past I'd ask you to enter your "UA ID" from the backend, you can now simply click a button, authenticate with Google Analytics, select the right account and then the right profile and start tracking! Check out how easy that is:

Google Analytics Configuration

Of course you can still enter the UA ID by hand if you want to, just check the box in the lower left of the screenshot and you'll get an input box to enter the UA ID.

E-Commerce integration

This plugin now fully integrates with both WP E-Commerce and Shopp: for both of these plugins it tracks sales using e-commerce tracking, allowing you to track where people that bought something came from, how they went about your site and which pages triggered them to buy.

All you have to do is install the plugin, and it'll automatically detect whether you're running one of these two plugins. You'll then get a box like this:

WP e-commerce analytics integration

Event tracking

In the past this plugin used page views to track downloads and outbound clicks, thereby inflating page views. I started doing this before event tracking even existed, but of course this needed to be changed. The plugin now uses event tracking for this by default, but, if you want to, you can just check a box and it’ll switch to using page views again. You can also switch to page views just for downloads, to keep your goals working the same way.

An API for this plugin

This plugin adds a couple of filters so you can add your own tracking from your own plugins without having to hassle with the rest of the tracking. The 3 filters are:

$push = apply_filters('yoast-ga-custom-vars',$push, $customvarslot);
$push = apply_filters('yoast-ga-push-before-pageview',$push);
$push = apply_filters('yoast-ga-push-after-pageview',$push);

Custom variables are hard to deal with, as they need to be in the same "slot" all the time, that's why the $customvarslot is passed along.

Go get the Google Analytics for WordPress plugin

I have to believe that I've convinced you by now, so please go get the plugin. Please do let me know in the comments when you've upgraded, and what you think I should be adding!

Google Analytics for WordPress reaches version 4 is a post from Joost de Valk's Yoast - Tweaking Websites.A good WordPress blog needs good hosting, you don't want your blog to be slow, or, even worse, down, do you? Check out my thoughts on WordPress hosting!

But today, I can tell you that we've got something new, and better. Tracking rankings is hard, especially because Google isn't too fond of people scraping their search results. Because of that, running daily rankings was a pain, but the data we all secretly wanted was in there, we've all known it for ages: visitor data, combined with rankings, day for day, week for week.

Let me show you what I wanted, all this time:

This isn't some mockup, this is real stuff. A rankings tracker called SEO Rank Monitor, that uses the Google Analytics API to combine rankings data with visitor data, showing you what the difference really is between position 1 and position 2. It's also the fastest rankings tracker I've ever seen, ranking a few dozen keywords for me in a few minutes, and then on a daily basis after that, giving some awesome ranking charts:

It also allows you to add your competitors, so you can easily track their goings on your keywords as well. Now all experienced SEO's know they should work on keyword groups more than they should work on single keywords, and thus this new ranking tool allows you to tag your keywords, easily allowing you to check rankings for the group:

As you can see it also allows you to export the keywords to a CSV file. There's more: tracking the number of backlinks to your domain according to the search engines you selected, the number of indexed pages etc. Also, because this isn't a rank tracker that runs on your own machine, it's not clogging up resources and you can check your rankings from everywhere you want.

The tool is paid, of course, but you can try it for free for a month. The normal pricing is $39 a month for the Pro package and $19 a month for the Basic package. With the Pro package you can track 2,500 keywords and 10 domains, with the Basic package you're limited to 1 domain and 100 keywords. In other words: the Pro package is well worth the money. Now there's something even better: I've negotiated a discount code with which you'll get $10 a month off, for as long as you decide to keep your subscription! The discount code should be easy to remember: "yoast" is all you need.

So go check it out, and should you decide to sign up, don't forget to use the discount code "yoast"!

Rankings that make sense is a post from Joost de Valk's Yoast - Tweaking Websites.A good WordPress blog needs good hosting, you don't want your blog to be slow, or, even worse, down, do you? Check out my thoughts on WordPress hosting!

Beneath you will find more info the updated Google Analytics plugin for WordPress and a guide on setting up zero result search tracking on your blog, but first we'll go in depth with the marketing and usability perspective of tracking those failed searches.

Identity vs. brand perception

Every website owner can explain in a few sentences why the website is online and why people should visit it.. this is the identity of your website. Each visitor has his own perception of your website (mostly based on, advertisement, design and tone of voice). This is the brand perception.

Within a perfect world the perception your visitors have of your brand and your identity would be a perfect match. Of course this isn't the case for most websites (unless you work for Coca Cola, Google or Apple, and even then). Due to the huge diversity of visitors almost all website are facing the challenge of providing visitors with the correct information to persuade them to take the desired action (buy, read on, interact, subscribe).

In our experience, most website aren't always successful in achieving this harmony of brand and brand perception… But how can you determine whether this is the case on your site? Look at your landing pages with high bounce rates. Visitors leave because they are not interested in your offer or expected something different when they clicked on the link to your website. And, of course, check out on-site search, it's a very valuable metric to look at:

How can internal search tracking help you improve your website?

Going back to the example of the landing page with a high bounce rate, we only know people are leaving the website and can only guess as to what they were looking for. Tracking your visitors searches will give you far more insight in what your visitors are really looking for but can't find.

By combining the (internal) search keywords, possible e-commerce data and the top content of your website you get some basic insight in the most popular content/products of your website. But this (as Justin Cutroni points out in his blog post) isn't including searches visitors made on your site that have zero results.

What does a zero result search mean?

If a visitors performs a search on you website and isn't getting any results it's likely he will keep searching… But there's a big chance this next search will be done on one of your competitors websites. A search query with no results can have quite a few different meanings, all of them useful information to help you improve your website, the most common ones are:

1. Brand Identity Issues
   The visitor has the perception that he can find a certain piece of information on your website but shouldn't have been on your website in the first place (a discrepancy between your identity and the brand perception of your visitor).

   Chances are you are attracting the wrong kind of visitors (or in the wrong stage of a buying process if your are trying to sell stuff). Taking a look at the traffic source in order to determine if you're ranking on the proper keywords or target the right terms with your CPC campaign (maybe you can save some bucks). The referral pages are worth looking at, maybe visitors performing this type of search just didn't look at the right pages which would help them in their quest for information.

2. Keyword Choices
   The words used by the visitor when searching for something are completely different that the vocabulary used on the website. For example: Your visitor searches for "VAT" but the website only contains a section about "goods and services tax".

   This situation is a great chance to improve your website. You will be presented with a list of quickly fixable "issue": keywords used by your visitors which are not present on your website at the moment. Including search terms which resulted in zero search results within related post/pages will make sure people can find what they are looking for (even if it's in their own words) and can make a huge impact on the user-friendliness and the effectiveness of your website (whether you are trying to sell stuff or just get your content read). Looking back at the identity and brand perception matching tone of voice and vocabulary with your visitors could prove a step in the right direction to get more loyal visitors.

3. The Internal Search Engine is Inadequate
   The search engine used on the website can not find content that should have been showing up in the search results, even when you're sure it's there. While this might not be as quick a fix, internal search is, as you will understand by now, hugely important. So you should solve the issues with the search engine and save valuable visitors.

Of course there are many more useful way's of looking at the data (think of the data visualization option of Google Analytics). Justin also points out two interesting way's of looking at it.

How to implement the Zero result search with the Google Analytics plugin for WordPress

Most of the steps Justin describes are covered within the updated Google Analytics for WordPress plugin. After installing or updating the plugin and configuring according to your needs, you're almost done. The tracking is done by default, you only need to perform the actions in step 3 of Justin's post, configuring the Site Search settings correctly within Google Analytics.

Google Analytics Site Search Settings

Configure your Site Search Tracking exactly like the following video:

Click here to view the embedded video.

After this you should be able to track your zero result searches. Do let us know in the comments if this is working for you and what it has helped you find!

So, if you're still here, go and update or install your Google Analytics for WordPress plugin! If you're a Magento user: stay tuned for the Magento extension that implements this same kind of tracking for Magento!

Huge thanks to my colleague Roel Willems for writing the first and awesome draft for this post! If you need help interpreting your Google Analytics results, or in setting up this tracking, you know where to find us!

Searching Without Result is a post from Joost de Valk's Yoast - Tweaking Websites.A good WordPress blog needs good hosting, you don't want your blog to be slow, or, even worse, down, do you? Check out my thoughts on WordPress hosting!

Google's new technology

Since a while Google is testing a new AJAX version of their search engine. I'm not sure who's seeing the AJAX version and who isn't, but in Holland most of the Firefox users do see it. You can see if you're one the new one by looking at the url of a result page:

The great thing about this new version is that it makes Google Analytics capable of tracking the clicked position. Yes you heard what I say: the position. Where the 'old' Google only allowed us to track the page a keyword was on, the new Google allows us to track the exact position.

The new filters

You can use the first 2 filters mentioned in the old article, be before you do that: create a new profile where you can apply these filters to (tip: watch the video where Joost explains this all):

Filter name: "Ranking 1"
Filter type: "Custom filter - Include"
Filter field: "Campaign Medium"
Filter pattern: "organic"

Filter name: "Ranking 2"
Filter type: "Custom filter - Include"
Filter field: "Campaign Source"
Filter pattern: "google"

And this is the new filter that is capable of tracking positions:

And the copy/paste version:

Filter name: "Ranking 3"
Filter type: "Custom filter - Advanced"
Field A -> Extract A: "Campaign term", "(.*)"
Field B -> Extract B: "Referral", "(\?|&)cd=([^&]*)"
Output To -> User Defined: "$A1 (position: $B2)"

The new reports

If you have implemented everything correct you should see this in the "Visitors -> User Defined" report:

A list of keywords with the position the keyword was on when a visitor clicked it. Now you're able to see the exact positions, more precise than any ranking tool that is out there. There's 1 minor drawback: business listings next to the little maps are counted as a position also:

The blue result is counted as the 11th result, and not as the first organic result. But when you're analyzing your positions you can easily separate the geo-related keywords from the rest.

Sitelinks

Very interesting: the sitelinks positions are also tracked, and in a more intelligent way than the maps results. If you click on a sitelink, the actual position of that sitelink is passed on. For example, this sitelink has position 4:

If you want to get better insights about your sitelinks you should create an extra profile with the first 3 filters mentioned above. Then add this extra filter to only track those keywords where people clicked on the (full or oneline) sitelinks:

Filter name: "Ranking 5"
Filter type: "Custom filter - Include"
Filter field: "Referral"
Filter pattern: "oi=(oneline_sitelinks|smap)"

The positions you will see are pure sitelinks positions, and you will get an idea about which sitelink is popular and which isn't.

Extra tip

While we are dissecting the referring url from the Google Search engine we could take a look at the "meta" parameter (my dutch blogpost about this). It's used when people use one of these options:

The selected country or language is in the "meta" parameter (not applicable for Google.com) and can be made visible with the following filter:

Filter name: "Language / Country"
Filter type: "Custom filter - Advanced"
Field A -> Extract A: "Referral", "(?|&)meta=([^&]*)"
Output To -> User Defined: "$A2"

And remember: do this on a new profile so you don't mess up existing profiles. The selected language(s) or country is visible in the "Visitors -> User Defined" report.

I had this filter for quite a while on a lot of Dutch sites and saw that the three options where used like this:

1. The internet: 96,69%
2. Pages in Dutch: 3,28%
3. Pages from Holland: 0,03%

Well, that was the update, hope you liked it.

Track SEO rankings and Sitelinks with Google Analytics II is a post from Joost de Valk's Yoast - Tweaking Websites.A good WordPress blog needs good hosting, you don't want your blog to be slow, or, even worse, down, do you? Check out my thoughts on WordPress hosting!

Adding a ranking filter in Google Analytics from Joost de Valk on Vimeo.

By the way: the explanation was done on the account for the site top kinderboek. This is a site we work on at OrangeValley, you can buy children's books there, and all the profit from it goes to charity!

The code to copy paste for the fourth filter:

1. Field A, campaign term:

   (.*)

2. Field B, referral:

   (?|&)(start|b|first)=([^&]*)

3. Output, user defined:

   $A1 (page: $B3)

A Rankings Filter in Analytics: the video is a post from Joost de Valk's Yoast - Tweaking Websites.A good WordPress blog needs good hosting, you don't want your blog to be slow, or, even worse, down, do you? Check out my thoughts on WordPress hosting!

So I've developed a Pepper that has two panes, one displays your Technorati scores like this:

The other displays the latest links Technorati has found for your blog, like this:

I used the Duck Soup Technorati API library to do this, and have to say it's very easy to use.

Download it here.

Technorati Pepper for Mint is a post from Joost de Valk's Yoast - Tweaking Websites.A good WordPress blog needs good hosting, you don't want your blog to be slow, or, even worse, down, do you? Check out my thoughts on WordPress hosting!

The “Yoast Post” and more is a post from Joost de Valk's Yoast - Tweaking Websites.A good WordPress blog needs good hosting, you don't want your blog to be slow, or, even worse, down, do you? Check out my thoughts on WordPress hosting!

What I saw today was mostly this though: even though we marketers know how to talk in KPI's and metrics, and we think we know how to set these, most of our clients don't, yet. While we talk about whether we're working on the completely correct data, and how we should attribute parts of a sale to different channels in complex sales situations, most of our (future) clients, would be benefitted more by just starting to measure those sales, and change them from page views to some raw estimate of income.

I've heard weird stories today, f.i. Mieke from Independer openly proclaiming that they attributed every sale to it's last referrer. Even if that last referrer was an obvious navigational search. Now I can say it's wrong, but... it's working for them. And even though I think that Independer should know better, as one of the few companies I know in the Netherlands with their own 5 man strong in-house analysis team, I'm wondering if I'm not being overly arrogant.

If you're a geek, like I am, and love to play with numbers, like I do, you probably have a tendency of making analytics overly complex, of over-analysing. And that's bad.

Why that's bad? Well, because Mieke can explain what she does and how it works to her management, and I, who would probably try to give a percentage of the sale to the search and a percentage to the earlier referrer, would probably have a hard time explaining it to anyone not in our industry...

If you're able to run a profitable business by keeping it that simple, and simply accept that some of the data you're measuring isn't completely correct, aren't you being a lot more efficient?

I'd like to say yes, but in the end, I think it will work against you. Independer works in the insurance business. I think it's safe to assume that people shop around quite a bit before they get a new insurance, going through all the stages of the AIDA process. That means that quite a few people might come to your site from early on in that process. Them seeing your site and your brand is very important at that point.

If you, however, cut costs rigorously, and throw out every campaign that isn't profitable for you, like Independer said they did, you will throw out all of the sites that help people find your site early on in the orientation process. If you stop that campaign, you will see your ROI go up. But will you also see the missed sales? No you won't. You'll be fooling yourself with analytics.

So it might work for them now, but at some point, there'll be a competitor who's better at it, and they'll beat them at what they think is "their own game". Making analytics too simple is a risk, whatever excuse you have.

Web Analytics Congress: the learnings is a post from Joost de Valk's Yoast - Tweaking Websites.A good WordPress blog needs good hosting, you don't want your blog to be slow, or, even worse, down, do you? Check out my thoughts on WordPress hosting!

My good friend Ton Wesseling just launched webanalisten.nl, a Dutch grouplog on the topic of webanalytics, if you can read Dutch, I urge you to add that to your feed reader, right now!

Webanalisten.nl is a post from Joost de Valk's Yoast - Tweaking Websites.A good WordPress blog needs good hosting, you don't want your blog to be slow, or, even worse, down, do you? Check out my thoughts on WordPress hosting!

He talks about why it's important to set good KPI's, and that you should actually do that before selecting a package. He tells a story about wanting to change a button from red to green to test something, and the client laughing about that, saying that it would take 6 months (!!) to implement that. Such a well known reaction, sigh...

Most people who visit your website only visit once, generally only look at one page, most likely stay for one minute, and transact with you once... If you divide your visitors into different segments, the segments that are most valuable too are usually small.

He's telling us that the main goal of web analytics is to get back to knowing your customer as well as the "old style" marketplace people did.

Web Analytics Congress in the Netherlands is a post from Joost de Valk's Yoast - Tweaking Websites.A good WordPress blog needs good hosting, you don't want your blog to be slow, or, even worse, down, do you? Check out my thoughts on WordPress hosting!

And it comes with a widget, as you can see in the sidebar, and in this pic, the link back is optional and disabled by default:

So, go download Blog Metrics and enjoy!

Blog Metrics 1.0 is a post from Joost de Valk's Yoast - Tweaking Websites.A good WordPress blog needs good hosting, you don't want your blog to be slow, or, even worse, down, do you? Check out my thoughts on WordPress hosting!