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Google gives its analytics tool a sexy makeover

Google Analytics has released a new version of its analytics tool, complete with a new user interface, customisable dashboards and a new email reporting tool.


Google Analytics dashboard

New features include:

  • Customisable dashboard - users can now add and remove data widgets. In addition, the way information is displayed has been improved, with clearer summaries of the data.

  • Email reports - rather than logging in on a daily basis, you can schedule reports to be emailed to you or others. You can also export reports as a PDF.

  • Improved graphs - allows you to compare time period and date ranges to plot trends over time.

  • Contextual help tips - Google has added improved descriptions of the data to help less advanced users.

Goal funnel

It looks to be an impressive facelift for the service, with a far greater range of display formats than the previous version, it provides just about every piece of data you could need.

While new users will get the new platform straightaway, the new version will be live on current Google Analytics accounts over the next few weeks, though existing users will still be able to use the old version for at least 30 days.

Meanwhile, rival analytics service Sitemeter is relaunching, with new graphs and display options due to be added to the service.

Further reading:
Microsoft tests Google Analytics rival



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Comments (3)
Posted 11:23 9 May 2007 by Graham Charlton
Filed under: Web Measurement and Analytics, Google, Web 2.0, Google Adwords, Google Analytics

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Reader Comments

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1. I look forward to the email report functionality. Clients can often forget to log in and check out the intricacies of their analytics - so this will be most helpful.
Posted 15:52 10 May 2007 by Michaela Carmichael
2. Sexy ? I guess if you think kindergarten books are sexy? Designed for a two year old..

I wish people who walked around touting its amazing achievement and success would actually use the product.. because you won't be the one stuck with it - webmasters such as myself will be - the interface is not easy, clean or user friendly - it is a mess.. and what would be nice to see is people using it and telling the truth instead of drinking the kool-aid.. it is a lousy product.. and I am not some 2nd grader who needed everything so dumbed down all my relevant data is 5 clicks deep.. I am a webmaster.. I am intelligent and need an intelligent interface - some of the most needed reports are missing and trying to use it to compare and contrast data is a nightmare.. please stop being so blind - I am a google enthusiast too, but still willing to tell the truth - this is just a bad product.. along the lines of IE 7 there is no way around it and when everyone starts being forced to use it watch the blogs go from "oh how cool shiny stuff" to "why do i have to export my data row by row" - or "where are my hourly reports" or "What do you mean I cannot see my landing page data.. and by the way where in the world is it?" BAD BAD BAD!
Posted 09:06 15 May 2007 by postingit
3. I wouldn't say its that bad. OK, so maybe it's not sexy, but it's a massive improvement on the previous version. Yes, the features Graham mentions are useful/essential, but these just really play catch-up to the other serious web analytics tools.

For me, the big improvement for real-world use is the capability to focus on improving an individual page by all the associated reports - it's all about the data discoverability as GAs evangelist Avinash Kaushik puts it.

I have blogged more on this here, with an example:
http://www.davechaffey.com/Internet-Marketing/C9-Maintain-Monitor/Web-analytics/Why-use-Google-Analytics

But maybe the previous poster is right and it is still pretty clunky and unintuitive for non-specialists - to get the most from it will still require experts - in-company or external consultants - it's certainly not something to dip into once a month. To this end Google has been working on developing
Posted 16:40 19 May 2007 by Dave Chaffey
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