The Jeffalytics Google Analytics Periodic Table

If you want a more scientific look at the Google Analytics , take a look at the Google Analytics Periodic Table created by Jeffalytics.



Courtesy of: Depth of Knowledge by Jeffalytics

Download the PDF version on http://www.jeffalytics.com/google-analytics-guide/ . Also look out for updates to this in future.

Real Time Reports In Google Analytics

Author : Bharati Ahuja

Google  has recently launched the Google Analytics Real-Time Reports : a set of new reports that show what’s happening on your site as it happens.

Real-Time reports are available in the new version of Google Analytics, and administrators with Analytics accounts will get Real-Time reports.

Google on its blog mentioned the following 3 ways one can use this data:

• Measure Social Media Impact 
• Campaign Measurement 
• Accessing Real Time 

With Real Time data it is possible to measure, monitor and track the immediate impact of a certain blog post or announcements shared via social media. We can assess the site traffic as a result of a certain tweet. We could also see when the blog stopped receiving the visits from the tweet, which helps know when to re-engage.

Similar is the case when we launch a new campaign and want to know what is working and whether the launch made an impact. The immediate traffic to the site will give us the indication of how well the launch was accepted by the netizens.

This data is available to some selected accounts and will soon be available to all. We have been having access to this data since 1st Week Of October and it surely is a great indicator to how your posts on Twitter are performing.

There is one more way this data can be of great help. Though we have to yet test its usability and ROI but this kind of Real Time Monitoring can help in serving the online customer online at that very moment instead of waiting for him to contact us .

The Real Time Data metrics that you get are as follows:

• Top Referrals 
• Top Keywords 
• Top Active Pages 
• Top Locations 

Overview: 

Locations: 

Traffic Sources: 

Content: 

All this data tells you how many visitors are currently visiting your site as of now and they have reached your site via which source , which keyword , which country and are currently viewing which page. This data is very helpful for an ecommerce site and if a person is appointed for monitoring this data and then cater to such real time visitors by asking the right questions and offer the requisite answers to their questions immediately via a chat feature on the site just like a salesman at a mall attends to the customers atleast during those hours of the day when the site gets maximum traffic.

One can sign up for this on sign up for early access https://services.google.com/fb/forms/realtimeanalytics/.

Traffic Sources And Significance From The SEO & Web Presence Perspective

The Google Analytics Usually has the following 3 main metrics  for Traffic Sources:

·     Direct Traffic
·        Referral Traffic
·        Traffic  From Search Engines

Usually when the SEO discusses the site performance with the client the no. of visits from the search engines are the focus factor as that is the key parameter on which the SEO campaign focuses on. But, keeping in mind the holistic nature of SEO it is very important that all the above 3 metrics should be monitored and all these three metrics should show an increasing trend.

Every source of traffic has got its own significance and shows a mark made for presence in that niche. 

Direct Traffic

Direct Traffic signifies the repeat visits or visits as a result of people keying  in the website URL in the browser and visiting the site.

Direct Traffic comes from people who already are familiar with the brand, know about your site, are regular visitors to your site, have come to know about your site through WOM or as a result of some real world advertisement campaign where you promoted the URL of your website.

An increase in the direct traffic over a period of time implies a good improvement in the WOM and brand awareness. Usually people do not bother about monitoring this metric and hence miss out on this aspect of web presence and web visibility.

If its an ecommerce site direct visits and repeat visits prove that the people are showing interst in the site and are buying again or intend to buy which if delved further can give a much richer insight about the site.

Search Engines:

Usually only the traffic from the search engines is kept a track of and monitored as that is how the success of an SEO campaign is usually measured and drilling it down further it is the no. of visits from Google that are focused and chased as a priority as most of the SEO campaigns cease to be search engine optimization campaigns and become Google optimization campaigns. Sometimes due to the client perceptions and some times due to the narrow perceptions of the SEOs themselves.

No doubt an increase in the search engine traffic from varied keywords will tell you volumes about the SEO work done on your site but just giving importance to search engine traffic will isolate your presence only to search engines and if this traffic gets affected due to some reason or other then your site is left stranded and loses web visibility.

If the SEO campaign is just focusing on Google and not considering traffic from Bing and other upcoming search engines then things get more narrowed down and in future if other search engines gain more market share the SEO campaigns will have to be reworked then. Hence over all importance and focus needs to be given to other search engines also, especially Bing, Ask and Blekko.

Referral Traffic:


Referral traffic is the visits your site gets as a result of the clicks on the URLs of your websites on other external sites on the web like the social media sites – Facebook, Twitter, Linkden, etc., the sites on which you are running affiliate programs, directory listings, industry portals, online memberships, blogs,etc.

These visits signify the presence of your site on the overall WWW which again should show an increasing trend in the analytics as this spreads the presence of your website on the web beyond search engines and adds a certain element of quality if the referrals are from authority, quality , topical , trustworthy sites as this is directly related to your inbound links too.

Each traffic source has got its own importance and adds to the aura of quality web presence. Hence traffic from all the sources needs to be monitored and measured and necessary steps to be taken improve and increase the traffic from all these sources.

This cannot be done only by the SEO. The website owner or atleast one person from the company needs to take active interest on the visits from the direct and referral source in co-ordination with the SEO .

SEO is becoming more holistic in nature and demands a quality web presence on the world wide. If the website owners want a continued quality web presence they need to adapt to the evolution taking place on the online scenario and act accordingly .

I think that the ideal break up for traffic sources percent wise would be

Direct Traffic : 33.33%

Referral Traffic : 33.33%

Search Engines: 33.33%

Which signifies an optimum overall presence and such a site will face less harm from the vagaries of traffic coming from one source in case of any sudden changes due to algorithmic change or whatever the case maybe.

A High Bounce Rate , Landing Page Optimization and , Lead Generation – An Overall Perspective

According to Google the definition of Bounce Rate is  as follows:

Bounce rate is the percentage of single-page visits or visits in which the person left your site from the entrance (landing) page. The more compelling your landing pages, the more visitors will stay on your site and convert. 

Google also mentions that Use this metric to measure visit quality - a high bounce rate generally indicates that site entrance pages aren't relevant to your visitors.

Following is the Google Analytics data of one sites for which there was a drastic change in the bounce rate after the site was redesigned. The data proves that a high bounce rate does not necessarily mean a low visit quality and an irrelevant landing page. Especially when it comes to organic search rankings data and data does not lie.

Month	Visits	Page Views	Pages /Visit	Bounce Rate	Average time On Site	% New Visits	Visits From Search engines
Apr. 2010	946	4022	4.25	13.74%	00:02:35	46.83%	28.44%
May. 2010	1196	5484	4.59	7.69%	00:02:38	58.36%	33.11%
June 2010	1118	4556	4.08	5.37%	00:02:12	59.93%	26.30%
July 2010	1238	5392	4.36	7.19%	00:02:45	65.51%	32.07%
Aug. 2010	1321	5498	4.16	7.72%	00:02:39	66.77%	26.87%
Sept. 2010	1400	5997	4.28	12.43%	00:02:38	67.21%	57.07%
The Website was redesigned and then the metrics were as follows
Oct. 2010	1392	3639	2.61	51.36%	00:02:42	64.01%	52.16%
Nov. 2010	1255	2712	2.16	58.25%	00:02:43	63.11%	61.04%

Google’s definition for bounce rate is more applicable to the PPC (Pay Per Click) data. Especially when it says that a high bounce rate signifies a low relevant or low visit quality.

But if you observe the above case study of a website for organic data or data for organic (SEO) rankings this co-relation does not hold true. If you observe the bounce rate with the old design was low in fact very good but the time spent on the site got divided into 4 pages and time spent on the site is 155 seconds with the visitor spending approx  38 seconds on the site.

After the new design with a more optimized landing page focused on lead generation the average time spent on the site is 160 seconds and the time spent on each page is approx. 80 seconds. The time spent per page is more, in fact doubled so that indicates that the content and design are appealing to the interest of the majority of the visitors.

After the redesign the company got more genuine, targeted and serious online enquiries as the landing page was more geared and focused on lead generation with the contact details available on every page along with a good pleasing design, color combo and content giving a clean, uncluttered professional look . The visit from the search engines show an increasing trend (Majority being from Google – so the rankings are also not affected by the high bounce rate.)

Hence, coming to a conclusion by just observing one metrics in isolation does not convey the right message. Data has to be  analyzed  in a very cohesive way focusing on what answers have to be sought holistically.

If the landing page is giving the right info.  to the visitor and that makes him contact the company for more details and if the contact details are available on that page itself then the bounce rate will be high. But the target of lead generation is achieved so in such cases a high bounce rate need not necessarily be a panic situation.

Nevertheless, in order to keep no stone unturned the bounce rate needs to be decreased by A/B testing or trying out various other tweaks to the site to  encourage the visitors to view more pages. As good SEO techniques shall always  work  to make all the metrics favorable as in many cases Google takes the bounce rate into account to determine the rankings.

These are our observations and conclusions.  

Your Comments and your views mean a lot to us. Please share your views on this data .

Google Announces In-Page Analytics - Visual Context For Google Analytics – Better Visualization Than The Site-Overlay.

Image by vrypan via FlickrToday Google has announced the In-Page Analytics , with In – Page Analytics you can see your Google Analytics data superimposed on your website as you browse. Compared to this there is the site overlay report of Google Analytics which has not worked very well .


In-Page Analytics of Google Analytics is still in beta so many of the functions may not work well. The site overlay also gave a similar overview but the visualization with in-page analytics is comparatively better as you can view the details regarding the clicks on each link of the page. This data is surely going to be helpful in deciding and tweaking the layout and navigation of the page which in turn shall help in increasing the CTR on the links of the page.

The best part is that you can apply filters and analyse the data as per your preference metrics and view and browse the selected preference.

View the video for the detailed information.