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Interesting Facts We Bet You Never Knew about Google Analytics

by    |    Sep 23, 2018    |       3 min read

The global web analytics market is experiencing a dramatic rise and its heart and soul is data, as the future lynchpin of business success in the years to come. In 2015, its value amounted to $1.3 billion, with 2022 set as the target year by which it will more than triple it to reach $4.9 billion, with more than lively CAGR of 20.8% from 2015 to 2022. This data led experts such as Oliver Schabenberger, CTO of SAS Institute, to proclaim that analytics is the engine of the new economy with data being its fuel. If this growth is driven by a business which is and will be extremely data-focused, one might ask what drives this trend in the first place? The answer is simple, as one of its main progenitors is Google and its web analytics, as the be-all and end-all of data-driven analytics. Despite its perceived popularity, some of the facts related to it are still not given enough spotlight.

Search Rankings Are Separate from Analytics (Or So They Say)

For example, RankBrain is Google’s machine learning AI system that powers up its search result processing engine. It is often mentioned as an important factor in ranking search results and is one of the cornerstones of SEO optimizations. Yet, the Google itself and its voice in form of analyst Gary Illyes claim that their search ranking algorithm does not use data from Google Analytics software which is currently used by about 30 million websites. Instead, the company recommends moving away from machine writing towards a more content focused approach, which includes using “natural” language as means for making RankBrain like you. Illyes himself thinks that instead of trying to court RankBrain, you should “ask people whether it sounds natural”, referring to the ontent you offer to your audience and its relation to how it is perceived by Google and its pet algorithm.

Online marketing illustration

Source: Total Spectrum Advertising

Demography or Geography? Both, Please

Similarly, as the businesses sometimes become too eager to review performance of their website, some tools offered by Google Analytics can become neglected in the process, such as those devoted to demographics and geolocations. In case of the first, Google offers you to perform a demographic review of the site that piques your interest. These reports identify sources of traffic and provide valuable data on distribution of audience and their accompanying activities related to a particular website, such as the duration of their stay on it, number of corresponding visits etc.

If this was not enough, Google Analytics gives you insight into the age and gender of the visitors, helping its owners organize their SEO and marketing strategies around this data. Same goes for determining sources of customers’ traffic in the form of identifying states and regions which website receive their visits from. Geolocation tools make it possible to determine the potential demand for the particular product or services you offer, thus better informing future investment decisions.

Mobile Analytics Are Key to Being Future Proof

Yet, we live in an age when the global mobile analytics market is set to follow in the footsteps of general web analytics trends, with its worth projected to reach $2.15bn in 2022. Google web analytics also reflect these trends, particularly if we know that users that utilize mobile devices for performing daily tasks online are five times more prone to quitting them if the websites of their interest are not optimized for this type of tech. Thankfully, the Mobile Overview report feature of Google Analytics offers you the possibility to get insight into the platforms which are used to access your content, be it a smartphone, tablet or desktop PC. In addition to this, Comparison View can be even more valuable, as it makes possible to monitor users’ behavior on individual platforms compared to average analytical data for entire website. In this manner, you can tailor their user experience and implement adequate marketing strategies.

How to Shop With Google via Behavior Analytics

So, you can say that Google web analytics offer tools which are driven by your need to better understand visitors’ behavior. Yet, it is often not easy to keep track of newly added features that are added to its package and one of the best examples for this is Shopping Behavior Analysis feature as part of the Enhanced Ecommerce set. It analyzes and presents figures pertaining to the entire shopping activity on your website, as the key segment of ecommerce. Thus, it provides data on the number of visits that featured no shopping activity, sessions involving visiting pages with products and the parameters relating to abandoned shopping carts and checkouts. In this manner, you get insight into the behavior of each individual user, allowing you to plan ahead with implementing actionable strategy based solely on pure website statistics.

google analytics image

Source: Klixo Business Web Services

Speaking The Language of Success

Notwithstanding the fact that Google Analytics is fully competent in 40 different languages, its web analytics also want you to best understand the utilization of languages for the marketing or SEO purposes. Its Language Report feature tells you what language your customers use and how your website can serve them even better. This analytical data can, for example, show you that speakers of particular language (say, Arabic) have an identifiable preference for your site, despite the fact that it is in German or English. Thus, you can consider localizing your offer for certain speakers, starting from landing pages all the way to entire website.

Get Experienced with Your Users

As most website owners know, loading times are one of neglected yet key elements of entire user experience and even overall search engine rankings. Thanks to Site Speed feature of Google Analytics, you can monitor this measure in order to optimize your website’s performance, with the accompanying Map function allowing you to configure these metrics for various regions around the globe. Still, in order to have users access your website in the first place, it is most helpful to identify keywords leading visitors to engage with it. Through its Site Search feature, Google’s web analytics algorithm allows you to come by a list of keywords employed by the visitors, helping you streamline your approach to SEO.

Conclusion

Despite their seeming omnipresence, Google web analytics and the company’s Google Analytics platform often feel unexplored in terms of utilization of their innate features. Thanks to them, today’s e-marketers, marketing and SEO professionals and website owners in general have access to a plethora of data that give them insight into the nitty-gritty of their website’s performance. In that context, it is important to fully explore Google’s web analytics and its accompanying tools for the purpose of being able to make sense of the oceans of data, transforming them into channels that will ultimately lead to prosperous business ventures.

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