Google’s three new features focus around Google+, its relatively new social network that is growing in popularity. Google+ had almost 50 million visits in December 2011 according to Experian Hitwise data – a 55% increase in traffic against November. While uptake hasn’t been as big as it could have been (its more popular amongst the tech and web savvy community) these new changes might tip the balance for Google and encourage more wide spread use of its social network.

Google’s shift is toward personalisation of the search results – and inclusion of Google+ results in searches. If you are logged in, Google will now serve you content that has been shared with you privately, along with matches from the open web in one merged list of results. Results are based on your own behaviour online and the behaviour and content distributed within your social network.

Logged in results will include:

Results from the open web, boosted by your personal behaviour

Results from the internet, boosted by your social connections

Public Google+ posts and photos

Private or “Limited” reach Google+ posts and photos shared with you

Moving forward, this change will make it impossible for businesses using search marketing to ignore the impact Google+ will have on search traffic.

Amit Singhai of Google introduced the update in a blog post, saying:

“We’re transforming Google into a search engine that understands not only content, but also people and relationships.”

“The social search algorithm, and the personal search algorithm, and the personalized search algorithm are actually one algorithm now, and we are merging it in a way that is very pleasant and useful.”

Some feel that being able to search both the public Google network and your own private network at the same time is helpful and would save them time but so far from what I have read – feelings are very mixed.

First let’s look at the new features in a nutshell:

Personal Results Feature

Results will include data that is personal to you and that is pulled from your social connections on Google+. Only you would ever see this set of results, and Google ensures us that private personalised SERPs are well encrypted.

Google+ Profile Inclusion

Google+ profiles will now be available to view via the search engine itself – you no longer need to visit Google+ directly. Profiles will even be available in the autocomplete box that Google provides. If you search for a name, information from your network will be served up first – either people you know or people that Google thinks you should or might know. See below:

Once you have searched for a person, you will have the opportunity to add the users Google returns in the search to your circles from the SERP itself.

People & Places

If you search for a topic of interest and Google+ has relevant profiles or business pages for your search these results will now be displayed on the right hand side of the page.

Currently changes are only rolled out on Google.com and do not extend to the mobile network. So far Google have failed to say whether the changes will roll out on Android devices which account for 50% of smartphone sales worldwide.

Opinions about Google’s changes so far….

One should remember that Google has been publishing personalised SERPs since 2005 however these changes are a little more obvious to people. While only rolled out yesterday – the news has caused a stir in the search marketing industry.

Some are unsure about what Google is trying to achieve and there have been accusations that it is warping search results and boosting the positions of Google+ posts to generate more interest in their own network.

Twitter’s lawyer, Alex Macgillivray, and former Google employee tweeted:

Twitter chose not to renew its contract with Google last year. Google no longer pays for access to its database and Google seemed surprised that Twitter would attack the new changes when it wasn’t prepared to share its data with Google anyway. If Twitter wants to have better coverage online for its breaking news then there has to be give and take. If none of the private social media sites are prepared to share their data then you can to some extent understand why Google has done what it has.

Google’s response on this was:

“Facebook and Twitter and other services, basically, their terms of service don’t allow us to crawl them deeply and store things. Google+ is the only [network] that provides such a persistent service… Of course, going forward, if others were willing to change, we’d look at designing things to see how it would work.”

People searching who are logged in will see significantly less of the general search results and as 90% of click throughs come from page one results – businesses are going to have to work even harder to ensure their website it visible. This in itself is one of the biggest complaints I think – people are worried that the search giant is making it more difficult for businesses to be seen (including businesses like Twitter and Facebook) and this has brought up questions over anti-competitiveness.

Antitrust issues have been floated about online– some search experts feel the decision Google have taken is a mistake – with it only showing a blatant need to promote its own social network. Previously Google would serve only the most relevant content to you – even if it did not have its own content to present it would seek out the most relevant source. Now however, Google will always promote Google+ content over and above natural content if you are logged in and haven’t opted out.

Perhaps ‘Search Plus Your World’ will be the reason that Google’s been looking for get Facebook to share its data with Google. No doubt there will be demand from users in future to include data from sites like Facebook in their personalised results.

See Google’s video introducing the new Social Search and personalised results:

The Potential Impact

Realistically, those marketers who until now have held off on getting up to speed with and using Google+ are going to be at a disadvantage when it comes to advertising their business. With Google+ profiles, and more importantly business pages showing up in search results it is likely that businesses with a business page would get more exposure than they did previously. Even if their website ranks badly, they have a chance to be highly visible in logged in searches if their business page is relevant to the users search. This opens up some opportunities for businesses engaged with Google+ but equally can be a disadvantage to those without a network profile. It could create a surge in signups on Google+ for businesses as they come to realise its new potential impact on natural search. Now is the time to get on board the Google+ train and if your SEO is not up to scratch it’s probably worth considering how this new competition in the SERP’s will affect your traffic.

While many businesses focus on looking after their customers and brand via Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn offerings these changes from Google will certainly mean more marketers are forced to look at how they can use Google+ to win more business online.

My Personal Opinion

Gut instinct tells me that while the press hasn’t all been positive about the changes, the actual user experience would be enriched by the change. Only a small percentage (say up to 20%) of searches are likely to be affected – this said however it would depend on the rate of uptake of Google+ moving forward. It’s no surprise to me that search is becoming more social – we have been bombarded with changes over the last few years which have all headed in a social relevance direction. We have long been telling people that social media is a big part of SEO and this will only make it easier to explain why social and SEO are so very closely linked.

Personally, I don’t mind the idea of being able to toggle between search results – it’s actually easier now to completely depersonalise your results than it was before.

We have heard a lot about what other people think but what do you think about the change – will it help or hinder your searches – make them more or less relevant in your opinion? We’d love to hear from you….!

Econsultancy’s annual Innovation Awards ‘shine a light on the finest creative thinking across the digital industry’. This year more than 450 companies entered the awards, so competition was tough! Approx. 150 companies have made the short list, across 19 categories including Search Laboratory. The judges are made up of a panel of expert marketers from brands such as BT, Tesco, John Lewis, CocaCola,  Nokia, Hiscox, EMI, Citibank and The Guardian.

The speech was on the topic of ‘SEO in 2012 – How to Win in Competitive Markets’ however the format had a twist – in order to keep content interesting and to the point, speakers were only allowed to have 21 slides and only had 21 SECONDS to talk per slide. This was challenging, particularly because Ian had no control of his own slide deck – it was being progressed for him by the organisers! Despite being a challenge to present, we thought this was a great format and one which the audience seemed to really enjoy.

In his talk, Ian covers (very swiftly):

- The history of SEO up to now

- 5 myths about SEO

- 5 Do’s in SEO

- 5 Don’ts for SEO

It’s a great presentation and gives a good overview of some of the worst myths and worst practices in the SEO sector as well as what you can do to get SEO working to your advantage.

Please click the image below to visit the Figaro Digital website where you can watch the full video.

There’s no limit to how much damage a bad customer review can do to a business. A recent study by Fasthosts which quizzed 1,300 British consumers, revealed that a third (33%) of participants and perhaps more startlingly, 52% of under-24’s said that they had left a negative review online of a product or service they had received.

So what’s this got to do with SEO?

Well, it just so happens that a lot of these websites that people complain on tend to be quite well placed in the search engine ranking positions. A bad review can prove near impossible to shift no matter how hard you try to knock it down. Websites such as TripAdvisor, Money Saving Expert and BBC Watchdog carry such high domain authority that they are always likely to be recognised by search engines and rank highly.

The rise of social media can also play a part in this. The amount of shares that a piece of content receives, either through tweets, Google+1’s and so on is also recognised by search engines. The constant evolution of social media is giving consumers more platforms and, in turn, more freedom to express their opinions and grievances.

How can I minimise the damage?

Let’s face it, even the best SEO’s are going to struggle to displace websites with such good domain authority. It’s just not going to happen. It’s very much a case of damage limitation here and common sense says that the first thing you could do is avoid upsetting these customers in the first place. However, for those that have already suffered from bad reviews there are a few ways you can counter-balance them.

Perhaps the simplest way to do this is to try and balance out the negative reviews with positive ones. This does not simply mean creating fake, positive reviews posted under pseudonyms. As tempting as this may be, it is extremely unethical in terms of SEO and a perfect example of “black hat” practice.

A more “white hat”, ethical approach would be to incentivise your customers into leaving a positive review if they are happy with the service they received. This could be in the form of a discount voucher for their next purchase, or a token free gift. Customers who have a bad experience are much more likely to write a review than those who are provided with good service. It’s unfortunate, but that’s just the way it is. As a result of this, sometimes it may be necessary to go above and beyond to ensure that they are inclined to wax lyrical about your company on these sites with high domain authority.

Interact with your customers

Another interesting statistic that can be drawn from the survey is the fact that 84% of participants would actually be willing to forgive the company and try it’s services again, so long as they acknowledged their complaint and engaged with them about it. Unfortunately, similar research into 400 small UK businesses revealed that only 12% had actually discussed an online complaint with the customer.

A great way to appease disgruntled customers and also boost your search ranking positions is through the use of social media. Many companies now choose to interact with customers who speak about them in a less complimentary light on social networks like Twitter and Facebook. I have personally experienced this with Northern Rail and Sky to name just two.

Of course, answering their queries would go some way towards repairing the relationship between consumer and provider. However to get the most out of this, you should point them towards a page on your website which best addresses their requirements. Maybe a help or contact page, or a page for certain products that they may not have been able to find. Social media sharing is having a bigger impact on the world of SEO day by day and you can help yourself by getting your website content out there.

Wikipedia

For millions of people, Wikipedia provides a valuable service every day. For SEO’s however, it can prove to be quite a stubborn block on the road to search marketing success. Outward links from Wikipedia have been “no follow” for a number of years and as a result, the flow of link juice has been stifled.

Another downside to Wikipedia, especially for businesses, is the fact that pages are required to be written from a neutral point of view (in other words, not by a company employee). Whilst in theory this is understandable, this can open a whole can of worms with regards to bad press. A particularly disgruntled customer could potentially air their grievances in the form of a cleverly worded Wikipedia edit (for example, by adding a “controversy”/”scam” segment to the entry) and the company may have no opportunity to defend themselves.

Once again, Wikipedia holds extremely high domain authority, and regularly ranks above most websites (usually in the top five or so) for any keyword. It goes without saying that a bad entry on here will be a costly one for most businesses.

Final Thoughts

It’s an age-old saying that the customer is always right. Whilst this may not always be the case, the customer is king in the sense that without them, you won’t make any money.

The high domain authority that “watchdog” style websites command makes it extremely important to keep the customers on side. Your site is almost certainly going to be seen in a darker light by search engines in comparison so it’s important to do your best to make these customers as happy as possible. If you can end up helping your search engine ranking positions in the process, then why not?

Google currently boasts 90% share of the desktop search environment, and their share of the mobile search market is not too far behind.

With this in mind, Google has announced the following best practice guidelines as to the visibility of websites in the mobile search environment;

Mobile/Desktop Website Redirects

Earlier this year, head of Web Spam at Google, Matt Cutts answered a question relating to redirecting desktop content to similar content displayed on a mobile site. His response was to reiterate that content which is identical across a desktop and mobile site, is not seen as duplicate content, unless the content is not redirected in the correct manner. Google themselves highlight that ‘you can redirect them to the corresponding mobile version of the same page’ and that, ‘Google notices the standard versions of the URL’.

Google uses a separate spider and indexing structure when crawling the mobile environment – known as ‘Googlebot-mobile’. When redirecting a mobile user from a desktop webpage with identical content to the mobile version, Google will understand that one has been designed for desktop, and the other for mobiles. “It’s fine if the content for Googlebot is different from that for Googlebot-Mobile”.

Mobile Search Visibility

Google states that if your website is not visible in the Google mobile search results, your site may have an issue with indexing:

Googlebot must crawl your mobile site before it’s included within the search index. Just like in desktop SEO, a sitemap must be created containing all URL’s within the website. To inform Google of the site’s existence, this must be submitted via Google Webmaster Tools.

Mobile URL’s

When Googlebot-mobile crawls your website, it will check that all URL’s are viewable on a mobile device. Although the website’s URL’s may be indexed within the standard desktop web search, they may not be viewable in mobile search. To ensure that your mobile site is suitable for Google mobile search, the Doc Type Definition of the website must be developed to the recommended format; “We support XHTML basic, XHTML Mobile Profile, WML, and cHTML” Also see Google Mobile Guidelines for more information.

Impact

Social media has been growing in power over the past few years and although it is still unclear how it directly affects your brand page’s SEO, Google and the other major search engines are factoring it in more and more with each algorithm update. I’m sure many of will have noticed that your SERPs are noticeably different when logged in to Google+, as shares and +1s from your connections help to boost certain pieces of content for relevant keywords.

Fundamentally, it is these shares that matter most to those seeking an audience. A post that has been shared numerous times by individuals with large spheres of influence should in theory prove that it is of good quality, interesting or funny. In order to track these interactions, social media platforms Facebook and more recently Google+ now offer updated data services by which users can see a wide range of information about how their content has been shared. Twitter is yet to provide any sort of statistical data but has also received an update to its service over the last few weeks.

However, while it’s interesting and fun to have a look through the numbers and see how your content spreading, there is still some debate as to how useful the data actually is for businesses looking to act upon it. As these new developments have been in place for a few weeks, now would seem an appropriate time to weigh up the pros and cons.

Facebook Insights

There was a big fuss over the last Facebook update. Its complete revamp of the timeline and other user interface properties caused the usual outcry about change and was followed by threats from members about leaving the site. In reality few probably did, especially when those with brands began to explore the new Insights tab on their page. The update allows brands to extract physical data in the form of a .CSV or spread sheet and use it to analyse brand visibility and their ROI.

Page owners are now able to see the demographic of the people that are liking their pages and sharing their posts. Posts can therefore be tailored to the demographic that is interacting on the most regular basis. Conversely, if content that was aimed at one age group is actually being picked up by another, future posts can be adapted. The impact of events that a brand is involved in can be tracked directly via the timeline shown below.

The frequency that people are shown content over the week can also be accessed, which allows the owner to view both unique and previous visitors to the site side by side. This is a distinct improvement in accuracy over their previous service, which only offered one impressions figure. Also the source locations of likes, visits and people talking about your brand have been added. A brand could therefore use this data to geotarget posts for a select group of their audience.

However, for all this useful data, the service lacks the details of actual individuals interacting with your page and how those interactions are then passed on. The nearest you get to this stat is the percentage ‘virality’ of each post. This is an area which Facebook will surely be quick to catch up on, with the potential of the Google+ metrics system being realised.

Google+ Ripples

As noted by Casey on the SEOmoz blog last week, Google+ Ripples feature went largely unnoticed when it was launched almost three weeks ago. However on closer inspection, it becomes apparent that this is a tool that brand owners and social media execs should not be overlooking. Just like a dropping a stone in a pond, Google+ tool places the source at the centre of a visualisation and then displays how the content spreads throughout the social network in real time.

Let’s take this post by Will Wheaton on the eviction of Occupy from New York’s Zuccotti Park. Its Ripples page can be seen below, accessible on G+ by clicking the drop down menu to the right of the post itself. The most recent and total number of shares statistics can be seen at the top left, above the visualisation. The graphic itself shows how the post has been shared via arrows to each user doing the sharing. Circles around the arrowheads indicate that particular user has a sphere of influence that people within his connection group are sharing the same post within. You can zoom in on each of these sections to see the individuals within these groups.

Below is a very cool time line feature, which allows you to playback the sequence in which the post was shared and a graph showing the peaks and troughs of sharing frequency over time. Finally, you can see the main influencers, i.e. users with most re-shares, a few stats on how the post spread and the different languages it was shared in.

There are currently a few limitations to the Ripples feature though, detailed by Ryan Crowe. First off, the post has to be public in order for you to view its Ripples. They also only date back to August 31^st at the moment and you can only access the Ripples of a post if it has been publicly re-shared once. You are able however, to re-share a Ripples page by linking to it.

The main advantage of this Google+ feature for businesses over Facebook Insights is obviously the ability to view the individual main influencers of content. Brands producing content can actively hunt for shares via certain highly influential users. If they don’t already have a connection with the individual they can look to build a relationship with someone who is active within the desired user’s group of connections. This could be done through LinkedIn or any other contact info on their page.

Conclusions

In short, Google+ appears to have one-upped Facebook Insights in terms of how actionable the data is, although it does lack a downloadable option. Whilst brand owners have been able to track social interactions via Google Analytics for some time, these new updates have opened the door for increasingly targeted social activities.  As social media becomes more and more influential to SERPs, brands will need to be completely switched on to maximise their impact.

“Search engine optimisation is a valid way to help people find what they are looking for via search engines… There are many valid ways that people can make the world better with SEO”

SYNOPSIS

Matt’s video goes a long way in dispelling the myth that SEO work is considered as spam by Google or that Google does not like it. In fact Matt says SEO done properly, by someone trustworthy is a great thing for your website.

Matt defines SEO as “trying to make sure that your pages are well represented within search engines”. He goes on to say; “There is plenty, an enormous amount of white hat, great quality stuff that you can do” to optimise your website.

Notice his emphasis on white hat (or ethical) techniques. SEO has moved on leaps and bounds and now the only way to optimise your site safely and effectively is to do it using only ethical content rich techniques.

Matt talks about on-page SEO (“making sure your site is crawlable and accessible“) and explains that the main aim is to ensure both your target audience and the search engines can access your site through links.

Keywords are discussed and Matt emphasises the need to undertake keyword research – the jargon and language you use on your website might not match what people are searching for online.

Matt covers some key considerations for those looking to undertake SEO work on their website:

• On-Page Crawlability & Site Structure

• Accessibility for your Target Audience (how easily can they find you)

• Language and Keyword Choice

• Site Usability

• Site Speed (speed is a definite ranking factor)

• Conversion Optimisation & A/B Testing

What Matt Cutts also says is that Google still does not condone black hat or unethical SEO techniques. People who simply keyword stuff the bottom of their homepage, or those who use purposely deceptive redirects are not encouraged as this is not enriching the quality of the search results whatsoever. Google is only interested in returning the best search results it can and thus these black hat SEO’s are not favoured by Matt and the Google team;

“SEO can be enormously useful but SEO can be abused and can be overdone” says Matt.

Regardless of the rogue traders of the SEO world; “Search engine optimisation is a valid way to help people find what they are looking for via search engines”

For more information Matt refers you to Webmaster Guidelines on Google.com/webmasters for more information about Google’s policies on SEO.

Matt closes his video saying “There are many valid ways that people can make the world better with SEO” and we agree with him!

Matt’s best advice for anyone looking to employ someone to do their SEO is;

“Find a good person, someone you can trust, someone who will tell you exactly what they are doing, the sort of person where you get good references or you have seen their work and it’s very helpful – they can absolutely help your website”

This week Google have made a significant change in the way their search engine will work. It is a change that is likely to affect every digital marketer – not just those using Google Analytics for insight into their website.

Google announced that searchers who are logged in to their account will now be redirected to search Google on an https:// (an SSL or secure) domain rather than on the old http://www.google.com domain.

Google’s new change will only affect data gathered from users who are logged into their Google account and by Matt Cutt’s estimation this only accounts for approximately 10% of searches each day. There is some speculation over whether this figure is accurate or not and a good point to note here is that with the advent on Google+ it is likely that the number of users searching, while logged in to their accounts, is likely to be on the increase.

What does this mean for marketers?

SEO is a hot topic amongst marketers right now with more and more businesses harnessing search engine optimisation to generate more revenue online. Knowing what keywords and phrases prospects use to search for your business is valuable insight, and data which a business can use to tailor its SEO strategy.

The key implication is that marketers will still be able to see organic (unpaid) traffic in their Analytics, but the data will no longer include the search term (or ‘referrer’ data) used by logged in searchers. Essentially information is now encrypted by Google.

Previously, had you wanted to see what each and every individual prospect had typed into Google before they landed on your site organically – you could. Many marketers used this information to shape on-going SEO efforts and used it to help determine a) how well certain brand terms might be doing, b) the quality of the lead and c) the lead nurturing approach they were to use moving forward. This is no longer possible as all the searched keywords will be hidden and private for anyone who has searched while they are logged in.

Webmasters will have less of an understanding of what keywords attracted visitors to their sites and this is a considerable loss.

Marketers using Google Analytics can still view the top 1000 searches in Webmaster Tools but will not be able to identify which users used which term.

What do I need to do?

Consult your web analytics provider to find out how organic traffic will appear. We expect that data should remain the same for organic traffic but just exclude the keywords. We should stress again that this applies across all analytics packages; it is not just Google Analytics users who will lose visibility on keywords used.

In Google Analytics, search data that was previously available is now labelled “not provided”. Please see the example below:

What about Paid Search?

Paid search (PPC) is not affected by this change and keyword data will still be available for marketers to use.

Why is Google Changing the Way We Search?

The change has come about to protect the privacy of Google’s users; it is an especially important change at this pivotal time when Google is becoming an ever more personalised service.

Logging in to your Google account now means you will automatically be sent to the new secure Google.com when you conduct a search – what you type in will be invisible to the website owner and all other third parties.

At a time when the way in which search engines use personally identifiable information is under scrutiny – Google is clearly making a stand in favour of its users. This change may not be popular amongst marketers; but I think it is clear that Google’s intentions are wholly admirable.

What next?

It’s not known if this will be the start of something much bigger in the privacy arena for Google. It could be possible that this will roll out across all organic searches in future but for now this is pure speculation.

Will the loss of keyword data in your analytics affect you? What problems might it pose for lead nurturing and conversion? We’d love to hear your thoughts on this matter… please leave a comment if you have an opinion on the topic.

Search Laboratory has teamed up with Econsultancy to sponsor this year’s Funnel event. The event is being held at London’s Lancaster Hotel on 1^st November 2011.

Ian Harris, our CEO will be speaking at the event on the topic of Global B2B Search Marketing. He will be divulging his top tips for businesses who want to get more from PPC and SEO including:

• How to succeed in B2B PPC and SEO.
• Who is doing it badly and what are they missing?
• Understanding the buyer and maximising valuable business enquiries.
• Closing the loop. Feeding back won, lost and pipeline data to refine search

Sign up to Funnel and attend Ian’s session at 11.40am.

The Search Laboratory team will be on hand all day so please feel free to come and visit us on Stand #1. If you have any questions relating to how you can use search more effectively to generate more revenue for your business, come have a chat with us – we will be happy to help.

About Funnel 2011 – Why Attend?

Funnel is all about how marketing can better drive qualified sales leads via prospect engagement and nurturing. 500+ of the UK’s most senior B2B and B2C ‘considered purchase’ strategists will be attending to discuss all the latest marketing tools and techniques.

The event covers a whole host of marketing topics including:

Search Marketing | Marketing Automation | Social Media | Lead Nurturing | Campaign Management | Email Marketing | Web Analytics | Revenue Performance Management | Web Personalisation | Marketing Resource Management | Data Management | Real-time Prospect Identification | Web & Video Marketing Platforms

Join us at FUNNEL and we’ll help you develop strategies for marketing automation and bring you up to speed on the new tools, tactics and technologies that will help you more efficiently and effectively deliver leads, convert leads and increase revenue.

View the Funnel 2011 Agenda

Click here to see who has already signed up to attend Funnel 2011

Think you know about Funnel Marketing? Why not try Econsultancy’s brilliant marketing quiz.

What is Econsultancy?

Econsultancy is the world’s largest digital marketing community, where over 100,000 sales and marketing professionals share best practice and learn to do everything better online.

Econsultancy publish valuable research and reports, hold key industry events, as well as offering training to its community.

Founded in 1999, Econsultancy has grown to become the leading source of independent advice and insight on digital marketing and ecommerce.

If you are interested in joining Econsultancy and want to benefit from the discounts you get as a member please Register Here.

Since Google bought Urchin back in 2005 it has revolutionised the web analytics industry with it ‘free to all’ offering.  Suddenly even the smallest websites had access to enterprise level analytics software.  Google’s motivation was to make the web a better place (Read – “make more money through AdWords”).  However Google has struggled to get larger organisations to adopt its service for a number of reasons. No SLA, unsuitable security control and lack of customisation and integration features to name a few.

Today is an exciting announcement for the analytics industry as Google have made some massive changes to address the concerns of larger corporations.  Please note though that to the company with basic needs then the functionality is not massively different – maybe people will now understand more what a great tool the free GA really is!

Some of Google Premiums New Features:

Dedicated Processing

• Massive hit limits in the billions per month

• Access to download unsampled reports

Advanced Features & Functionality

• Get conversion attribution modelling.  Don’t worry if you can’t afford the premium version and still want this – we have a great free tool here that gives you Google Analytics attribution modelling !

• 50 custom variables  – allowing you a massive potential to segment and analyse you visitor data.

Support

• Dedicated support from Google.

Service Level Agreement (SLA)

• Explicit Data ownership

• 99.9% on data collection, 99% on reporting and 98% on data freshness.

So what does this mean for Google Analytics Standard Edition? Is Google aiming to start charging everyone?  The answer to this is definitely not!  In fact the pace of features added to the standard version is growing rapidly!  And Google’s plans to extend this are ambitious to say the least.  Here is a list of new features recently added to the standard product.

• Version 5 – As well as a slick new interface there have been substantial changes under the bonnet  – promised to allow faster, more and better additions to the product over the coming months!

• Multi-Channel Funnels – Much awaited ability to analyse all the sources that contribute to a sale or goal.

• Social plug in tracking – track the interactions with your social plugins

• Real Time Tracking – LAUNCHED TODAY! – This puts data in your reports within 1-2 seconds.  Watch traffic levels as it happens.

• Site Speed Reports – see how fast your various pages are loading.

Search Laboratory are one of just over 220 worldwide Google Analytics Certified Partners (GACP’s).  For help with installing, using or analysis using GA then please visit our Analytics services page.