Online advertisers make frequent use of AdWords reporting in Google Analytics to measure the impact of paid visitors to their site and business. The insights and actions based on these reports help search advertisers to optimise their online campaigns and site experience for maximizing conversions. We see a lot of questions, however, on why there is sometimes a discrepancy in the reported number of visits and clicks.

It is not unusual to see a discrepancy in the numbers reported for AdWords clicks and Google Analytics visits from your AdWords campaigns. There are a few reasons as to why this happens even if your Google Analytics implementation is correct. However, there are steps you can take to ensure that the discrepancy is kept to a minimum. Over at the Solutions for Southeast Asia blog, we take a look at some common implementation errors plus any steps we can take to identify campaigns, ad groups, and keywords that are causing us trouble. We also cover best practices to put in place to ensure that we are measuring and reporting to the best of our abilities.

The post provides a 4-step guide to identify which campaigns or keywords are not tagged correctly and how to rectify the situation. The steps are summarised below:

Step 1: Check that you have the basics covered. Check that you have linked the correct AdWords and Google Analytics accounts, applied cost data to the right profiles, and that auto-tagging has been enabled in the AdWords account.

Steps 2 and 3: Identifying the culprits. Look through the AdWords reports to identify campaign and keyword landing pages that are contributing to the discrepancy.

Step 4: Fix the problem. For each of the problematic landing pages check that:

• The correct Google Analytics Tracking Code is implemented
• The Google Analytics Tracking Code is in the right location in your HTML source code
• The auto-tagging parameter is present in the URL of the landing page that the visitor ends up on
• You are not using a combination of auto-tagging and manual campaign tracking parameters
• Paid visits are not being filtered out in your profile

Head over to the Solutions for Southeast Asia blog for a full guide on troubleshooting Google Analytics visits and AdWords clicks discrepancies.

Posted by Prissilia Kho, Google Analytics Specialist and Vinoaj Vijeyakumaar, Customer Solutions Engineer, Google Southeast Asia

If you've passed the Google Analytics Individual Qualification exam, you probably want people to know. One thing you can do is publish a link to your test record. But, you should also make sure that you're searchable from the Google Testing Center.

Here's how to make sure that people can find you. First, log in to the Google Testing Center. (Note: Use the login information you created during your first visit to the Google Testing Center.)

Access your profile on the Google Testing Center.

In the "Google Analytics Individual Qualification" section under "Would you like your name added to the database if you pass this test?", select the Yes option.

Click "Save Changes."

That's all there is to it. Now anyone searching for you on the Testing Center site will find you!

Posted by Helen Huang, Google Analytics Team

Before you say goodbye to the holidays, take a look at this great holiday list on the official Google blog by our very own Avinash Kaushik, called Top Ten Ways To Get Your Business Ready For The Holidays. By publishing this now in January, we're hoping you'll take these lessons into the whole year, because as Mom used to say, "Christmas should be every day of the year."

Seriously, these tips are applicable moreso now, when the holiday craziness is over and you have a second to optimize your campaigns and analytics, and also to take a look at some other free marketing tools from Google that you should really be using, such as Ad Planner, Insights For Search and Website Optimizer. 2010 will be much better if you take Avinash's advice early on.

For instance, here's numbers 1 and 2 from the list, to whet your appetite:

1. Update your wishlist:
Use the Search-based Keyword Tool to find keywords that you never thought of incorporating into your campaign for the holidays. (Here is a how-to guide for how best to use the tool: Monetize The Long Tail of Search).

2. Know what's hot this season:
Research on Insights for Search to see what the “Rising Searches” are and understand how people are searching for your brand (and your competitors!).

Make sure to read the rest!

Posted by Jeff Gillis, Google Analytics Team

This is the fourth video in our recent Rapid Fire series which we are now calling Web Analytics TV. In this series you share your most burning questions via the Google Analytics Google Moderator site and we answer them.

Here's the list of last week's questions. We enjoy hearing from you, so please keep the questions coming. Like the hosts Click and Clack from a long-standing radio show called CarTalk, who will answer any car question that exists, we'd love to do the same for web analytics. Call us Data and Point? Hm. Click and Clack is catchier. If you can think of a name let us know. But please, ask any question related to web analytics. Tools. HiPPO's. Reporting tips. Challenges. All are fair game, so ask away.

In this episode we discuss:

• Tracking social media referrals in Google Analytics
• Why do I see clicks with 0 visits in Google Analytics keyword reports
• Does sharing data with Google Analytics have an impact on Organic Search rankings?
• How to track Google custom site search engines in Google Analytics
• In keyword reports how to change '+' characters into whitespaces
  
• How advanced profile filters work
• Best practices for reporting user "engagement"
• What insights can you gain from the content drilldown report
• How can one change the cookie duration of visits
• How does one become excellent at web analytics
  

Here are links to resources we discussed in the video:

• Tracking Custom Search Engine with Google Analytics help center article
  
• An article discussing tracking custom search engine by Robbin Steif
  
• Custom Advanced Filters explained by Robbin Steif
  
• How regular expressions work in Google Analytics by Robin Steif
  
• Why engagement is an "excuse" by Avinash Kaushik
  
• Example Engagement API report using the Google Analytics API (check out the Solving Business Problems section)
  
• Tracking methods to change the duration of the visitor, session and campaign cookies in ga.js
  

We'd love to hear your comments or questions in the comments section below, and let us know if you find this helpful.

Also, if you have a question you would like us to answer, please submit a question or vote for your favorite question in our public Google Moderator site. Avinash and I will answer your latest questions in a couple of weeks with yet another entertaining video. Thanks!

Posted by Nick Mihailovski, Google Analytics Team

2009 was a fun year for us, and we hope, for you too. Here's a month by month breakdown of new features and significant launches from 2009, with links to the blog posts announcing or explaining them. And if you haven't yet, take a look at the Google Analytics YouTube channel, where you can see tons of tutorial videos on the new features.

A big thank you to our Google Analytics Authorized Consultants, who have helped advise us on our product roadmap and told us what you need to see in the product.

Get ready! 2010 should be even more exciting.

January

• Track Google Sites with Google Analytics

April

• The integration of AdSense and Google Analytics
• The public launch of the Google Analytics API
• Google Analytics IQ - an online course in web analytics techniques and Google Analytics implementation, administration, and analysis tools
  
  

May

• Integration with Google Ad Planner so that you can replace traffic estimates with directly measured Google Analytics data
• Pivoting and Secondary dimensions become available in your reports
• Share custom reports and advanced segments
• Track YouTube brand channels with Google Analytics

June

• Import your Google Analytics goals into AdWords
  
• New homepage and website for Google Analytics
• Google Analytics Desktop Wallpapers!
  
  


• International blogs in German, UK & Ireland, Spanish, French and Japanese

July

• Advanced Segments for Event Tracking

August

• Getting started guides for the API
• Number and reach of Authorized Consultants breaks 100 global partners, with a presence on every continent except Antarctica

September

• Event Tracking available via the API

October

• More goals and new goal types
  
  
• Expanded mobile reporting
• Advanced Table Filtering
  
  
• Unique Visitor metric added to Advanced Segmentation and Custom Reports
• Multiple Custom Variables
• Share Advanced Segments and Custom Report templates
• Analytics Intelligence reports and Custom Alerts

December

• New asynchronous tracking code
• Annotations allows you to easily denote unexplained dips or spikes and figure out "what happened".
  
• Custom variables available in Advanced Segments and Custom Reports
• New tracking code setup wizard
  
  
• API new features, including support for Advanced Segments, more goals and goal types, and custom variables
• Urchin Software version 6.602 available in more languages

And, of course, we added the ability to post comments on our blog posts.

From our entire team, we hope that, wherever you are, you and yours had a safe New Year's Eve and are looking forward to a happy, healthy, productive and data-driven 2010!

Posted by Jeff Gillis, Google Analytics Team

You're going to put surveys in holiday gifts this year, right? Well, if you're as customer-centric as Avinash Kaushik, Analytics Evangelist for Google, you just might. And next year's gifts will be even better.

Avinash has just published Web Analytics 2.0: The Art of Online Accountability and Science of Customer Centricity, also at http://tr.im/akweb. It looks to be a fantastic read by one of the foremost web analytics practitioners and teachers, who is seeing an undeniable evolution of web technologies and online trends, including social media, video, and mobile.

Now is a crucial time to make changes - or get started - and in his typically perceptive style, Avinash begins with a new definition of web analytics:

"Web Analytics 2.0 is: the analysis of qualitative and quantitative data from your website and the competition, to drive a continual improvement of the online experience that your customers, and potential customers have, which translates into your desired outcomes (online and offline)."

From this framework, he explains how to do web analytics correctly, starting at the best place of all - choosing the right tools (aka, the beginning). As you read, pick any chapter, and you'll emerge an adept at an element of web analytics, from the basics of tracking your site, to analyzing visitor clickstream, to SEM and SEO.

But he goes way beyond this, discussing the practices of competitive analysis, website testing, surveys, using and tracking social media. And he even gives practical tips for working in the industry, including what statistics you might want to know. The book is written in Avinash's clear style, including charts and screenshots.

If you've ever had a conversation with Avinash, you know that you'll come away enriched about our industry and practice. I remember speaking with someone who reported to him at Intuit, who said that she learned more about web analytics in her first half hour one on one with Avinash than she had in her entire career before that.

For instance, we recently launched 20 goals, up from 4, per profile. Avinash has been speaking about the importance of tracking many goals, what he calls micro-conversions, for a while. Take a read to get an expert practitioner's view.

And on top of the incredible content in the book, Avinash is donating 100% of the proceeds from sales of the book to benefit The Smile Train and Ekal Vidyalaya. To read more about the book from Avinash himself, take a look at the announcement on his blog.

Getting this book for yourself or your analyst will be giving a gift to your company. Think of Avinash as Santa Claus. (Avinash Claushik?!)

Happy holidays. :-)

Posted by Jeff Gillis, Google Analytics Team

Urchin analytics software has a long tradition of integrating with other software/hardware platforms, and today we are pleased to announce the latest such collaboration: Coradiant's new Analytics In A Box (AIB). AIB is an appliance that sits behind your firewall, passively collecting web traffic data via a packet-sniffing technique. This gives you the option of reducing your reliance on page tags, as Coradiant's system collects traffic data in an independent way. Log file headaches are also gone for good, which will be music to the ears of any sysadmin!

AIB uses a modified version of Urchin 6, in conjunction with Coradiant's complementary technologies to give you new ways to look at both your web traffic AND the performance of your site/server.

From Coradiant's press release:

"Analytics In A Box provides a comprehensive view into customer Web site interaction, and insights into online conversion outcomes. Analytics capabilities are substantially enhanced through access to a richer data model and customizable reporting solutions. A complete set of dashboards for executive consumption, as well as access to granular data allows deeper insights into marketing optimization, site performance, content optimization, conversion behavior and navigational analysis."

Please see Coradiant's site for more information.




Posted by Scott Crosby, Urchin Software Manager