Your Google® Game Plan for Success: Increasing Your Web Presence with Google AdWords, Analytics, and Website Optimizer

Chapter 9. Sophisticated Google Analytics Features

You didnt think that I was finished talking about Google Analytics after Chapter 7, did you? Good, because there's a lot more where that came from!

Google Analytics really earns its stripes by providing users with a roster of advanced features, like Intelligence, advanced filters, and event tracking. Some of the advanced features you'll see in this chapter are available in other web-analytics platforms, but you'll have to pay for them. These are usually add-on features that require a higher premium, or are packaged with the enterprise-level suite of reports that may not be competitively priced. With Google Analytics, they're all free of charge.

The first feature I want to talk about is a relatively new one, added toward the end of 2009 and the beginning of 2010, called simply "Intelligence."

Intelligence and Custom Alerts

When you log in to the Google Analytics interface, you'll see an item on the left navigation menu labeled Intelligence, underneath the Dashboard button. Clicking it opens up a whole new world of analysis, insight, and perspective that you don't currently have anywhere else in Google Analytics.

Intelligence provides insight into metrics and dimensions that perform above or below expectations in a given date range. These Intelligence notifications are automatic from Google and cannot be edited; however, you can create your own custom alerts that meet your own criteria.

Understanding "Intelligence"

As you know from reading ...