Mission : the Google Analytics Individual Qualification (GAIQ) test

> trying to tame web analytics in depth

What ?

The “GAIQ” (Google Analytics Individual Qualification) is a test that serves as a formal recognition of knowledge in Google’s web analytics tool. One of the best ways to become a more knowledgeable user and deepen your understanding of Google Analytics!

It is composed of 70 multiple choice questions with two to five answer choices. The test is taken online via the Google Testing Center (google.starttest.com) : each sitting cost 50$, and the pass mark is 80% – so you might get a minimum of 56 correct answers out of 70.

The GAIQ is an “open book” exam : during the test, you have the ability to pause and come back anytime within the next five days, but within a total limit of 90 min.  Also note that you’ll have the possibility to come back on a previous question you answered to change your choices.

Indeed Google Analytics is quite easy to learn, but it’s tough to master – as you can see below with an overview of topics covered by the GAIQ test :

• Accounts & Profiles
• Interface Navigation
• Tracking Code
• Interpreting Reports
• Traffic Sources
• Campaign Tracking & AdWords Integration
• AdWords
• Goals
• Funnels
• Filters
• Advanced Segments
• Cookies
• Regular Expressions
• E-Commerce Tracking
• Domains & Subdomains
• Custom Reports
• Motion Charts
• Internal Site Search
• Event Tracking & Virtual Page views

Why ?

Web Analytics is an essential aspect of website project management, and even of SEO – for sure you cannot improve your work without monitoring your website performances! And it turns out the most widely spread tool is Google Analytics – indeed I couldn’t find any other web analytics tool as powerful and exhaustive as this one…!

This is why I think I definitely need to get a better, deeper use of it – it cannot but improve my skills as I know this is something important for digital strategy. And this certification will allow me to assert my skills to my clients !

How ?

Lots of resources are available to prepare the GAIQ, the most substantial ones being given by Google itself. It is recommended to study these resources by taking notes and also being logged to your own Google Analytics account to practice and walk through each lesson.

Official Google resources :

• The Google Analytic blog
• The Google Analytics IQ Lessons section
• The Google Analytics Help Center
• IP address range tool
• URL builder tool
• Google Analytics Cookie Usage on Websites

Other useful resources :

• 10 practice problems for GAIQ – PDF guide (free download)
• The Google Analytics Test is a free training resource for GAIQ preparation
• GAIQ Exam Test Notes by Jens Sorensen
• Inside the GAIQ testing browser, with screenshots

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Now I only have to get working on that. My final exam of my Tourism Marketing & Management degree will occur in the 2nd part of May – so I’ll be starting study for the GAIQ from now on but I think I’ll be taking the test by the end of June. Wish me luck !

5 basic Google Analytics reports

> essential traffic data for analytics beginners

If Google Analytics is the best tool for traffic tracking and audience analysis, you can easily get lost in its many features and reports! That’s why here I offer you to find out about 5 “essential” reports to help you get a better understanding of your website stats.

.

1. What are the most popular of your pages ?

..

NB : pages “/” and “/index.html” are one and the same page.
.

Content > Site Content > All Pages
.

 

2. What keywords are used to find your website ?

 

Spotting keywords request that made user find your website is quite important – indeed this will suggest you keywords (combinations) that are not yet in your strategy in order to make it even more accurate.

.

Traffic Sources > Sources > Search > Organic

.

 

3. What are your landing pages ?

 

Landing Pages are pages through which users enter your website – that’s why it’s important to identify them and then optimize them to make sure they make your visitors stay on your website and even visit other pages.

.

Content > Site Content > Landing Pages
.

 

4. What do people click when browsing your pages ?

 

Analyse users’ behavior on your pages by knowing where they click. This can be a nice opportunity of improving clickable elements according to their importance for your navigation.

.

Content > In-Page Analytics
.

 

5. What are your users’ routes through your website ?

.

Get an idea of how people navigate through your website – and then optimize your site navigation accordingly.

.

Audience > Visitors Flow

.

How-to : measure your Facebook Page success

> metrics and KPIs definitions for your Facebook Insights analytics

Facebook Insights is the analytics dashboard to help you monitor your Facebook strategy. It is available from the time your Page gets a minimum of 30 Likes. To access your dashboard, log into your Facebook Page and simply click See all in the Insights thumbnail of your homage.

Dashboard is quite easy to read, and for each item you’ll get a definition on question marks mouse-over. Image below shows dashboard homepage – don’t forget to switch between tabs at the top of it to get more detail data about Likes, Reach or Talking About This.

Let’s now get diving into the different metrics Facebook Insights offers, knowing that our goal is definitely to get efficient measuring of our actions and publications in order to optimize them. Yes, web analytics is no doubt to help you create content that will catch the attention of both your fans and your target audience.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Facebook Insight metrics – definitions

• Reach > “the number of unique people who have seen your post” – fans and “friends of fans” who are logged into Facebook and actively viewing their news feed.
  

When clicking any Reach  number a dispatch graph will appear : it’ll give you the distribution of “traffic sources” – organic, paid or viral. The Reach indicator depends a lot on the day and time when you publish something on your Page – you need to study your audience and your Reach evolution to determine the best moments to make new publications in order to reach as many fans and friends of fans as possible!

• Engaged Users > ”the number of unique people who have clicked  your post” – that’s to say they came to see a pic in its full-size view, or clicked to see number of Likes or on your Page’s title, etc…

When clicking any Engaged Users  number a dispatch graph will appear : it’ll give you the distribution of users’ actions – keep in mind that a single user can make several actions, that’s why the Engaged Users  number can be lower that Photo Views  for example.

• Talking About This > ”the number of unique people who have created a story  from your Page post” = comments, Likes, Shares, responds to event, answers to Facebook question.

When clicking any Talking About This  number a dispatch graph will appear : it’ll give you the distribution of users actions – Likes, Shares and Comments.

• Virality > ratio of number of People Talking About This divided by post Reach.

_____________________________________________________________________________________

Key Performance Indicators

You don’t need to monitor dozens of KPIs for your Page, you need only the right ones according to your objectives!! So here are 6 KPIs I find very interesting for a Facebook Page analytics work and that are not directly provided by Facebook Insights – you’ll have to calculate them by yourself and I recommend using spreadsheet documents to track these performances: a monthly or weekly reporting is enough, don’t forget to create curves for better visual representation of data in question.

Conversion Rate
> the ratio of People talking About This out of organic impressions – how many people who saw your publication generated engagement by taking “concrete” action?
Post conversion rate = (# People Talking About This (comments + likes + shares) / # organic impressions) x 100 = %

Interest Rate
> the ratio of Engaged Users out of organic impressions – how many people who saw your publication got interested enough to click on it?
Interest rate = (# Engaged Users / # organic impressions) x 100 = %

.
Engagement Rate

> the ratio of People Talking About This out of Engaged Users – how many people who were initially interested by your publication generated even better engagement by taking “concrete” action?
Engagement rate = (# People Talking About This / # Engaged Users) x 100 = %

.

Viral Reach

> the ratio of viral reach out of total reach – how many impressions reached “Friends of fans”? What (types of) posts are more likely to have good virality?

Viral Reach = (# viral impressions / # total reach) x 100 = %

.

Churn Rate
> % of your fan base turned over during the month – are your fans getting annoyed by your publications??
Churn rate = (# FB unlikes + # FB unsubscribes) / (# fans at the beginning of reporting period + # new FB likes – # of FB unlikes & unsubscribes) x 100 = %

.
Paid Likes Rate
> if running paid media, use this KPI to get an idea of how much engaged traffic is driven to your Page via your Ads campaign(s). Go in the Likes  tab > Sources of Likes.
Paid Likes Ratio = (Likes from ads / total of new likes on the period) x 100 = %

_____________________________________________________________________________________

NB: extra pieces of advice

• Be careful of always selecting the right period of time – KPIs monitoring is useless without a precise definition of time segments!
• I recommend not taking care of the Friends of Fans metric given on your dashboard homepage, as this shows “the number of unique people who were friends with people who Liked your Page” – which make no real sense when trying to improve your Pages performances. Rather stick to the Virality  indicator.
• Keep in mind that users Liking your Page create much more potential virality than the ones commenting on your publications. So you might adjust your KPIs to this notion if needed for your strategy.
• Studies show that 80% of a post Likes occur within 8h after the publication was made – again choose the moment you publish something with careful attention.

.
Images courtesy of Grez Productions – thanks!

[Not Provided] – the ghost requests

> Google turns against SEOs by keeping some data away

When observing my Google Analytics stats for my different projects and works, I’ve always been annoyed by the top request for traffic audience being “[not provided]“…

Indeed I used to believe that Google was randomly concealing a share of these keywords requests in order to, I don’t know, protect its “secret recipe”… (Cute, isn’t it??) But that’s not the case, as I just learnt that [not provided] terms actually come from users browsing the web with search encryption, i.e. on Google SSL Search, with HTTPS prefix in URL. This simply means that, when your visitors are surfing under encrypted/secured search, the request they searched for in Search Engine will not appear in the referrer info of GA reports – thus preventing webmasters and SEOs from getting precise data about what visitors typed in to reach their website!!

If the issue is arousing webmarketers’ attention these days, that’s because the latest version of Google’s own browser – Chrome 25 beta – uses nothing but search encryption. This follows on from the wave of other browsers using Google SSL Search that started in 2012: Firefox 14 in July, then Safari on iOS6 in September. Also let’s say that since October 2011 users connected to their Google accounts are under secured search too – this is supposed to help improving results personalization according to user’s profile…

As you can see the percentage of [not provided] requests cannot but keep on increasing in our web-analytics dashboards… And the thing is that blocked searched terms are particularly problematic for web publishers, as it reduces importantly the possibility of understanding organic traffic… When considering keywording analyse and strategy as an essential point for SEO, well there’s no need to say that encrypted search is quite an obstacle for us.

Last but not least, the official note from Google Chromium blog (Jan 18th, 2013) announcing the change evokes the will of protecting users’ private life. Isn’t it ironic when knowing that Google still provides requests terms to AdWords announcers…? Yes, when users click on sponsored ads the searched request will be given to advertisers: [not provided] blocking concerns only organic results, not paid ones… Turns out traffic data really does have a price – what a shame!

As a conclusion I’d say the number of [not provided] items definitely depends on how your visitors are surfing online: on a secure search browser, Firefox or Chrome? on iOS mobile browsers? being connected to their Google account? In any case, we might start thinking about other potential ways for getting the search requests data back to our reports – for ex. using paid search data, or why not data from other search engines…? Yep, for the first time I might want to step away from the Big G – I usually stick to its directives and advice but here I think it really is fooling us by hiding key data to SEOs for so-called users confidentiality and SERPs accuracy, yet available when you’re keen on investing in its own ads platform!