Just because Google Analytics is free, it doesn’t mean it lacks some handy features that make it more than powerful enough to compete with the big guns. Here are five tips to help you get more out of Google Analytics.

1. Filters – Make sure you are not skewing your results
2. Trends not numbers – Are you measuring your results correctly?
3. Annotations – Keep notes on spikes in results
4. URL Tagging – Keep track of your online marketing campaigns
5. Event Tracking – Get statistics on specific page elements

1. Filters
   When doing any sort of measurement and analysis, it’s important not to skew the numbers. You can start by filtering out visits from certain IP addresses and domains. You don’t want yours or your agency’s visits skewing figures such as visits, pageviews and time on site. 

   How
   To activate, simply go to your account page and select Filter Manager on the bottom right of the page. You will be taken to a page where you can filter by IP address, Domain and Sub-directories.

2. Trends not numbers
   Now that you’ve ensured you’re not skewing the results, it’s important to know what you’re looking for in performing your analysis. If you’ve had the opportunity to use a variety of analytics tools, you’ll notice that the numbers very rarely match up due to the different ways the tools measure their results. This is why it is important that you look at trends in your analysis, not exact numbers.

   How
   Visits have increased by 12% compared to last month.
   NOT
   Visits have increased by 5,023 compared to last month.

3. Annotations
   A relatively new feature to Google Analytics, annotations make it easier to make notes for particular results, especially useful if you are reporting for a client or sharing results. It is also quite useful for your personal analysis to keep track of why spikes in results are occurring.

   How
   To create an annotation, simply click on a date in a graph or on the arrow drop down button at the bottom of the graph, which will expand to let you add your comment.

4. URL Tagging
   This is one of the most useful analytics tools and yet one that is most forgotten. If you send out an e-newsletter with links to content on your website, wouldn’t you like to know what links users clicked on in your email? Yes, most email marketing tools will show you the number of clicks, but what happens when they get to your site?

   You can add a tracking code to the end of the URL’s you used in your email that let Google Analytics know what campaign the users have come from, what link they clicked and what they did on your site. It works in a similar way to a Google AdWords campaign and can be used for all your online marketing campaigns, not just email.

   How
   You can tag all external links to your site so you get a better understanding of which links are bringing in the most traffic. You will find your results in the Content area of your analytics account, under Campaigns. To make it easy for you, Google have provided a tool that builds tags for you.

Your URL will look something like this:
http://yoursite.com/?utm_source=Monthly&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Comp

5. Event Tracking
   Lets say you have a Google Map integrated into your page and you want to know whether users are using the map. This is something that can’t be tracked via your traditional pageviews or content statistics. Event tracking lets you track specific elements on your page such as maps and videos, and allows you to see what functions within these elements the users are interacting with.

   How
   This requires a little more technical integration than the previous tips. You can find some specific instructions for event tracking here.

These tips should hopefully get you on the way to more accurate website analysis. There is a lot more you can do with the Google Analytics tool that I haven’t included here, but feel free to share your tips in the comments below.

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At first glance, you might think the iPad is going to be a flop. It has a number of limitations and may appear to some to be nothing more than a big iPod touch, but that’s where Apple is very clever.

They didn’t make a piece of hardware for a tech enthusiast or highly computer literate user. If they had done this, they would simply be undercutting their MacBook sales. No, what Apple did was ingenious. They targeted a device directly to the casual user.

This is where my mum (and possibly yours) comes in. Whereas as you and I may see the lack of multi-tasking and flash as a limitation, I doubt you’ll get the same response from your mum. It is an easy to use touch screen that lets you do the basics.

So yes mum, I shall get an iPad, and for once, you’ll be able to appreciate one of my tech gadgets.

> The iPad Is For Everyone But Us
> Why My Mom’s Next Computer Is Going To Be An iPad
> The Apple iPad, explained to geeks

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Twitter gives you the option of enabling Geotagging in your account settings (see image below). Once enabled, third party applications will add a link to your location along with your tweets. (Note that these will only be visible on third party applications and not on the Twitter website).

Now whenever you post a tweet from Tweetie, TweetDeck or a number of other applications on your mobile device, users will be able to see where you were when you made your tweet.

Another cool little feature is that you can track your tweets on Google Maps. All you need to do is go to Google Maps and type in your Twitter feed address, which will look something like this: http://twitter.com/statuses/user_timeline/yesterdayshero.rss (you can see an example of this here).

Bing Maps Beta offers quite a nice Twitter specific service, however it does involve you installing Silverlight (ahh Microsoft). You can see an example of the results here.

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For some time now Firefox has held majority share in the browser market, with most recent figures showing 47% of people use Firefox. The closest rival is Internet Explorer (versions 6, 7 & 8) with 37.7%, you can see a breakdown of the remainder of market share in the table below.

In looking at the usage statistics, it is important to remember that Google Chrome has only launched a Mac version of their browser this month. It was at this time that extensions for the Windows version of the browser also went live, soon to be launched for the Mac version. For those who can’t wait, there is already a way for Mac users to start using extensions here.

The problem some users may find after installing several add-ons to the Firefox browser, is that it tends to slow the browser down significantly. Google Chrome is already a faster browser than Firefox, so when extensions inevitably slow the browser down, it should still perform better than its rival. If the number and quality of the extensions available on Chrome match those of Firefox in the near future, I know which browser I’m choosing.

Why haven’t I mentioned Internet Explorer in all this. I guess this is because I see Chrome directly targeting Firefox users. Let’s face it, there are too many organisations using IE, let alone your average internet user who simply doesn’t care what browser they use, they just want to ’surf the web’. The fact that the number of IE6 users grew (yes, you read correctly) from October to November this year exemplifies this. These aren’t generally the people that are going to be swayed by slight advantages in browser speed and add-ons, at least not yet.

Firefox seems to already be showing some nerves, suggesting Firefox users change search engines, from the Firefox default Google, to Bing. This arising after Google CEO, Eric Schmidt, made some concerning comments on internet privacy.

It may still be too early to tell, but if you look at the table above, in the last month Firefox lost a small amount of market share which seems to have gone directly to Chrome. It will be quite interesting to see how this trend progresses in the coming months.

You can take a look at an ad created by Google UK to promote Google Chrome below.

UPDATE: Google Chrome seems to be increasing its advertising efforts with a wraparound ad in London’s METRO. They have also launched a site where you are able to send Chrome as a Christmas gift to your friends and family.

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LinkedIn has recently opened it’s platform for compatibility with third party applications as well as launching Twitter integration. Is all this turning a professional network into a social one?

You can now link your Twitter account with LinkedIn, allowing you to syndicate your tweets with your LinkedIn status. I’m not sure that many of us would want our personal tweets going to a professional networking site. Luckily this is something that LinkedIn had considered, giving you the option to only syndicate tweets that include a #in tag.

TweetDeck, a popular social media dashboard, has just integrated LinkedIn. Meaning you can now send status updates to LinkedIn directly from TweetDeck, as well as receiving updates from your network. Just be careful not to post that Tweet or Facebook message to LinkedIn by mistake. Download the latest TweeDeck release here.

All of this does show some great innovation from the professional network. They have recently reached 3 million users in the UK and receive a healthy level of site traffic around the world, ranking 19, 18 and 32 in the USA, UK and Australia respectively (stats from Alexa).

Opening it’s platform and integrating social media platforms such as Twitter is a step forward in gaining a larger user base, but will this blurring of the professional and social cause problems? It does offer users an easier way to access and update their LinkedIn profiles. Improving usability in this way will help ensure people not only set up their profile on LinkedIn, but use the site as a communication channel.

Let’s just see if they go as far as Facebook integration next…

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I generally find Facebook to not be very user friendly and the most recent changes confirm this. You now have two options of how to view your Facebook feed:

1. News Feed – Shows you a tiny selection of updates posted by friends based on “popularity” and generally includes updates that are at least 2 hours old. Popularity is based on comments and likes, both of which you won’t receive as people won’t see your posts as they’re not popular enough to appear in their feed in the first place.

2. Live Feed – See EVERY single thing your friends do, including but not limited to, becoming fans of groups that you don’t care about, befriending people you don’t know and accepting event invitations that have nothing to do with you.

You might be thinking, “it’s all good, I’ll just use the ‘Highlights’ section to see what interests me.” Well, that’s gone too!

Why can’t we just have a live news feed that doesn’t include every single thing everyone on Facebook does? Surely this could at least be an option, rather than giving us the option to see everything, or only see some things posted 8 hours ago? Couldn’t they have just left it the way it was?!

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The long awaited preview launch of Google Wave has come and gone. You can sign up to receive an invite here (don’t hold your breath) if you haven’t received one already.

It has launched with mixed reviews, most of which can be attributed to all the hype surrounding Wave and the fact that it’s still in alpha release. The potential is there, which is something not many will deny, unfortunately it hasn’t reached a level of usability as of yet that will engage most users.

The real benefits of Google Wave lie in mass contribution. In it’s current state, it’s a mashup of email, IM and Wiki. The limited number of users with invites also makes it quite difficult to use Wave to its full potential as you simply have a limited number of people to collaborate with.

My initial thoughts are that the success of Wave will rely on the use of third party applications, in the same way that Twitter has taken advantage of third party applications to notify users of updates and essentially customise their use. A few have already been released including Waveboard and a Firefox Add-On. Unless you continually check back to Wave to see if any updates have been made, it’s really just email laid out in an IM message string. This is where third party applications can really help customise your experience.

Wave has very much been sold on a replacement to email, with Google themselves stating that the premise behind Wave was “What would email be like if it was invented today?” (seen in the video below). Like Twitter, it will evolve to eventually find its own use with the help of third party applications, at least until some of this functionality is built into the product by Google.

> Google Wave has a long way to go…
> Waveboard: Google Wave Client for Mac and iPhone is Coming

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The release of iTunes 9 has included some social media additions, an iTunes store revamp, Genius features and some great extras for the iPhone. However, some rumored additions were left out, such as Last.fm integration and blu-ray playback.

Social Media Integration
You can now share music you are browsing in the iTunes store on Facebook and Twitter by clicking on the little arrow next to the song/album title. This sends an image of the album to Facebook and a Twitter message with the album name, both linking through to iTunes. Not an exciting addition as you can’t send social media messages from your music library or preview a track directly from your Facebook post, but a start at least.

iTunes LP
You may have noticed that some albums in the store have an “iTunes LP” badge on them, which is really a more advanced version of the “Digital Booklet” you would previously receive with purchases. The new Muse album for example, offers photos and videos and is presented quite nicely. You can see the LP home screen in the image above.

Genius Mixes
The Genius function has added Genius Mixes (featured in image above). iTunes will automatically create playlists based on your music genre’s. As long as you’re not expecting your own personal DJ, the mixes are actually quite good and even get you listening to some of that music you forgot about. You can find some more details on Genius Mixes here.

Home Sharing
Home Sharing is a welcome addition and moves towards a solution for those with more than one computer in the household (on the same wi-fi network). You sign into ‘Home Sharing’ with your iTunes account on multiple computers, which then allows you to share your music between them. You can only share between computers with one iTunes account, but there is a way around this if you wanted to take music from a friends computer in a quick and easy way.

All you need to do is sign in with your friends account details when you set up ‘Home Sharing’ (you can change these settings in the ‘Advanced’ navigation menu). Then just drag the music you would like from their library to yours, this will copy the music accross to your computer. This won’t affect any purchases you make as your ‘Home Sharing’ settings are kept separate to your regular iTunes account settings.

iPhone
The iPhone 3.1 firmware update coincided with the release of iTunes 9, with one long awaited feature… You can now organise your applications directly from iTunes instead of trying to move apps around your iPhone manually (image right).

Apple also introduced it’s Genius feature to the iPhone app store, where you can now view apps suggested to you based on your previous purchases.

Another not so welcome change is the comeback of long sync and backup times of your iPhone. Hopefully this is sorted in the next firmware update.

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After releasing the long awaited and much improved iPhone application, Facebook have launched a few other neat features over the last week including @mentions, notifications for Mac and Facebook Lite. News about the ‘Facebook Movie’ also emerged.

The @mentions work in a similar way to Twitter and for anyone who has used TweetDeck before, you will recognise the similarity in function. Basically, when you refer to one of your Facebook friends in a status update, you can place ‘@’ and start typing their name. You will be presented with a list of matching names to choose from. Selecting your friends name will then allow anyone viewing the status to click on the persons name to be taken directly to their profile.

Facebook Lite launched, which means you don’t have to wait for long load times on slower connections. This is pretty much done by removing much of the advertising, feed sorting options and simplifying the graphics. You’ll notice some shared videos and links including videos will not appear on your Facebook Lite feed. A big plus for anyone travelling and having to make do with sub-par internet connections.

For those of you on a Mac, you can now receive Facebook notifications directly from your desktop. You can download the application here and try it out. The app adds a notification icon to your menu bar which notifies you of any updates and allows you to update your own status without logging into the site. This could be dangerous for those people already addicted to Facebook.

The ‘Facebook Movie’, officially titled The Social Network, is based on the novel The Accidental Billionaires and will be directed by David Fincher. The movie looks at the evolution of Facebook from its beginnings in 2004 and is due to start filming next month. Justin Timberlake has now been confirmed to be playing a lead role.

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The music industry seems to have found another way to screw online retailers as well as anger pretty much anyone who listens to music, by wanting to charge royalty fees every time a user listens to a 30 second music clip. They worked out that scraping every last penny they can from online retailers like iTunes will benefit them in the longrun. This is obviously out of jealousy, as iTunes found a way to make money out of selling music online and all the music industry can do is complain about all the money they’re apparently losing!

They are even looking to receive royalties from movies and television shows that are downloaded, even though they already receive royalties from the production company for the use of the music in the show or movie.

What exactly does the music industry think this will do?? There’s no way iTunes is going to take this cost on without charging it onto the customer in one way or another. They are basically asking their customers to pay for their advertising. Soon we’ll get McDonalds calling our homes to collect money for their next campaign.

Hmm, does anyone else think that this is going to make people want to download music illegally even more! I think this article in Gizmodo sums it up perfectly. “Dear music industry: go f**k yourself”

Oh, and I’ve also worked out how to save the movie industry from pirates; charge people to watch trailers!

> Musicians: iTunes Not Paying Fair Share
> GREED: Music Industry Wants Royalties on 30-Second Previews and TV Downloads
> I’m sorry, but we have to ban music. That’s just the way it is.

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