Welcome to the latest monthly issue of our regular newsletter which features news, tips and advice on effective website marketing, with a particular focus on search engine marketing techniques and trends.
This month we look at 2 recent enhancements made to Google Analytics, with some new reports that provide better insights for website marketers. Firstly, we look at the new User Explorer reports that further enhance its value, by allowing website marketers to review individual actions of anonymous users.
Secondly, we review the recent introduction of more detailed search console data in Google Analytics, which enables the ability to review organic search data with User behaviour, to get more useful insights and to see which search terms generated the more engaged visitor traffic to the website.
Finally this month, we look at how Shopping Ads now target mobile Users on Google Images and the possible ramifications upon AdWords managers’ Shopping campaigns.
You can read more below, or you can also browse through previous editions of the newsletter by month. You can also follow us on Twitter for the latest developments during the month, or follow our Facebook page or Google+ page for updates.
On to this month’s edition…
New User Explorer Report in Google Analytics
Last month Google Analytics started to roll out a new report – the first for some time – which is called User Explorer. This feature allows website marketers to review individual actions of users, which are anonymous but help to provide insights into user visits and paths through a website. They can also help to improve the user experience by seeing how people interact with a website.
The new User Explorer report can be found in the Audience section of the reporting menu, and the initial view of the report shows a list of anonymous client IDs collected from a visitor’s device and browsers. This basic data includes the number of sessions made by that user, their average duration, bounce rate, goal conversion rate, and transactions / revenue if applicable.
If you then click into an individual client ID, you can see their activity history with time-stamps for each site interaction and page view. You can then filter this report by PageView, Goal, E-Commerce or Event, and individual entries can be clicked for additional data, which enables website owners and marketers to get insights into individual user visits and repeat visits, leading to a goal completion, or visits to a particular page on the website.
Along with the Real Time reports which have been around for some time, the new User Explorer report advances the value of Google Analytics even more, with the kind of detail and insights that some marketers will find really insightful. For example, Google suggests that you might want to see how your top 10 customers interacted with your website (or apps) and you can gain insights into visitors that spent the most with you over a given time frame and analyse each of their journeys on your site over that time period.
By viewing these reports, it’s possible to use these individual interactions to uncover new opportunities to improve the overall experience of visitors and their common path to conversion. The User Explorer report can also help with marketing activities, such as identifying anonymous individual customers who have not converted recently and help them to re-engage with your site using different existing marketing channels.
Check out the new User Explorer report in your Google Analytics account now and see what insights can be gained about individual user interactions. You can find more information about this report here, or you can contact us for further help.
More Detailed Search Console Data in Google Analytics
In another new development for Google Analytics, there is a newer version of the Search Console report now being rolled out, which helps to provide users with more detail about search traffic coming from Google. This continues to be a valuable report and a good insight into search engine optimisation (SEO) activity, as the traditional keyword report remains limited with over 95% of search visits still being shown as ‘not provided’.
For many years, Google has enabled the linking between the Search Console (previously Webmaster Tools) account and Google Analytics, so that organic search visitor activity has been accessible in the Acquisition section of Analytics, under the Search Engine Optimisation menu. However, data has been quite limited, until now, as Google is now enabling a deeper integration of data between the 2 accounts, and renaming the menu item as ‘Search Console’, with 4 sub-reports being made available.
This new development shows the Search Console metrics combined with Google Analytics data in the same reports, so that users can now see a full range of Acquisition, Behaviour and Conversion metrics for your organic search traffic. You can therefore review organic search data with user behaviour to get more useful insights and to see which search terms generated the more engaged visitor traffic to the website.
The most valuable of the new reports is the Queries one, showing the search terms people used on Google to find your website. The landing pages report is also useful to identify the most common pages people found on Google, plus there are reports for visits by country, and a new one by device. You can therefore gain new insights into the organic search traffic coming via Google and review how visitors engage with this site, to reflect good, relevant search terms, and possibly landing pages which are not performing well.
These reports also help to identify new opportunities for search traffic, either through low ranking positions for good search terms, or pages on the website that could benefit from improved optimisation or content. In addition, the data being collected in Google Analytics can also be downloaded automatically each month by email, which is important to do as the Search Console data is still currently only available for a rolling 90 day period.
You can read more about these new reports here and to access these new reports you need to have a Search Console account set up and linked to your Google Analytics account. If you need help with this, or would like further information about how these reports can be used, please contact is for more information.
Shopping Ads Now Target Mobile Users on Google Images
Another interesting development recently announced by Google is the introduction of Shopping ads into the ‘Images’ section of its search results for mobile devices. This is as a result of mobile’s share of online retail purchases continuing to grow, with the latest figures for 2016 showing that 34% of online retail purchases (in the US) took place on mobiles.
People who search and shop on their smartphones at least once a week say that product images are the shopping feature they turn to most. The top questions Google Images users ask Google are ‘What’s the price of this?’ and ‘Where can I buy it?’. That’s why Shopping ads have been introduced on Image Search through the Google Search Partners network. (Google Image Search is not yet part of the ‘core’ Search Network, which is composed of Google Search, Google Play, Google Shopping and, from April 2016, Google Maps). So now, for Shopping campaigns that are opted into displaying upon the Search Partners, the ads for related products will appear as shoppers browse Google Images.
Google explained that the goal behind this change is because many shoppers begin their research using Google Images. When they find something they like, they’re forced to click through to the website to see whether the product is actually for sale and how much it costs. Shopping ads are a natural fit for this activity, since they provide merchant and pricing information directly alongside the image. This is especially useful on mobile devices, where jumping from website to website can be particularly challenging.
If you would like to know more about how these changes to Google Shopping can be used to improve your business’s sales, contact us now.
We hope you’ve found this month’s newsletter useful. As usual, if you have any questions or need help with any of these items, please contact us if you need any more information on the items covered, or our advice on any aspect of your website’s performance.