Data will only be shared with websites that have opted for anonymous data sharing with Google Analytics.

The time frame for data in the first newsletter report is from 1 November 2010 to 1 February 2011. The data is compared to the same period one year ago, i.e. the time frame between 1 November 2009 to 1 February 2010.

It has been found that websites have seen a reduction in the number of pages/visit as well as the amount of time spent during each visit and the bounce rate.

The pages/visit have gone down from 4.9 to 4.5 on average, while and the time spent per visit has gone down from 5.49 to 5.23. The good news is that on average, the bounce rate has reduced from 48.2% to 47.0%,

Bounce rates in various countries are found to be in reverse proportion to the time spent on site. While the bounce rate is highest in East Asian countries like China, Korea and Russia, the time spent on site is highest in Caribbean nations like the Bahamas, British Virgin Islands and Aruba.

Goal Conversion rates are surprisingly high in Italy and the Vatican City. The media conversion rate is around 1.1%, which is also the average in countries such as India, France and the U.K.

While traffic has increased slightly from direct sources as well as from search engines, the traffic from referral sources has reduced.

The use of operating systems such as Linux and Macintosh has gone up marginally, but the use of Windows has fallen from 89.9% to 84.8%.

In the first incident reported last week, data protection officials in Germany discontinued talks with Google and were to have likely to file a court case against the search engine, as their investigations led them to believe that Google was only playing for time.

In another case, Google is countering Spanish government mandates over alleged invasion of privacy laws. Spanish authorities have instructed Google to delete links to data that is outdated or inaccurate.

Analytics Trouble In Germany

The bone of contention, in Germany, was the detailed information collected by Google Analytics, from users’ IP addresses. The information is pulled from website visits in Germany and then processed in the U.S.A.

Both German authorities and Google were discussing this issue since November 2009. Google had agreed to shorten the IP addresses of users and create different protection modules for the various Internet browsers. However, this was not possible with Safari and Opera browsers and so their users did not remain anonymous.

Google maintains that Google Analytics has met the requirements of the European Union, since the beginning. However, Johannes Caspar, Commissioner for data protection in Hamburg believes that this is not enough, and Google is trying to merely pass the responsibility to the website operators.

As a result, the German government has started threatening businesses who use Google Analytics with steep fines and legal action.

Libel Trouble In Spain

In Spain, Google insists that the task of removing inaccurate information should be carried out by publishers and not by the search engine, as the latter would amount to censorship.

The Spanish data protection agency, the AEPD, says that Google is breaking the country’s laws, which gives people “the right to be forgotten”. The authorities filed 90 court orders against Google at the request of individuals who want Google to remove specific links that contain libelous content about the person’s past.

According to Google’s lawyer, “Search engines are a fundamental part of the information society, and it would be attacking freedom of expression.” That said, Google does block certain material that violates copyright regulations in the U.S.A. and neo-Nazi material in Germany, which also amounts to censorship, by their own reckoning.

In both countries, Google’s handling of privacy has once again come under fire. Neither government seems likely to back down. In fact, the German tactic of dissuading website owners from using Google Analytics could prove to be quite a dangerous tactic for Google if other countries in the region follow suite.

Microsoft adCenter Analytics was designed with the intention of providing website owners with detailed reports of the activity of their users and also to let them track the performance of their advertisements.

While the service has been closed with immediate effect to new customers, it will continue to be available to existing users till the 31st of December 2009. On that date, all hosted services, data collection and technical support will cease. Those who wish to save any historical data have been advised to download reports through the export feature before that date.

The Microsoft adCenter Analytics team claims that the aim of undertaking this project was to fulfil the needs of small and medium size self-service customers, and to evolve a strategy for web analytics. They claim to have achieved this objective. Their blog states, “It enabled us to most confidently determine that we can be of most value to advertisers and publishers by offering a tailored solution that meets more specialized needs.”

The adCenter Analytics blog will now be called ‘Insights and Analysis’ and it will focus on research and best practices helping online marketers navigate better and improve market optimisation.

Strangely, Microsoft has suggested some alternative analytics services that their clients can now turn to, and the list includes Google and Yahoo!

Independent video creators and media companies can now get statistics about the performance of their video such as the regions in which that particular video is most viewed, how often it was viewed each day since its publication and its relative popularity in the geographic region compared to other videos.

The comparative study of the popularity of a video as compared to other videos in a given time frame will allow content creators to find out where and when their video is most likely to be played and can also provide further details like the time taken for the video to rise in popularity and how long it stayed at the top.

According to the Official YouTube Blog, new features, including a specific breakdown on how a particular video was discovered by viewers, will be added soon.

Until now, the ‘About this video’ button provided very elementary statistics such as the viewer numbers for each video.  Through Insight, advertisers, publishers and ordinary end users will be able to find out a lot more about the response of the public to their videos and thus work to improve viewership and popularity.

A better understanding of what viewers want will of course be used by publishers to attract more users to their videos and YouTube branded pages, thereby resulting in increased income for Google.

Advertisers stand to gain as well. Studying viewer statistics will help YouTube advertisers to fine tune their content and the time of display and thus reach their target audience more effectively.
The Official Google Blog provides instructions on viewing Insight stats – “you can find currently available metrics by clicking the “About this Video” button under My account > Videos, Favorites, Playlists > Manage my Videos.”

Analytics account managers have the option to share data with Google products only, with Google products and the benchmarking service or to not share the data at all.

Users choosing to share data with Google products will allow Google to use the information to improve AdWords, AdSense and other Google products. It is stated that the data from these users will not be shared with any third parties. Users opting to share the data with Google products and the benchmarking service will be sharing their information (anonymously) with Google and a host of third parties, including direct competitors.

Benchmarking, however, is not a bad thing. The service will provide webmasters valuable information about how their website is performing in comparison to other websites of the same size in the same industry vertical.

Google will not use the data from the analytics account to determine the website’s organic search engine ranking or its AdWords ad quality score. However, Google will aggregate data from a number of websites and then use it to improve their own services and results, which in turn could affect the website ranking and AdWords performance indirectly.

Further information about the new service can be found on the Analytics Official Blog as well as Analytics help center via the links provided below:

• Google Announcement: Benchmarking now available
• Data sharing FAQ
• Benchmarking service FAQ

Mobile network operators, mobile search providers and associated mobile commerce solution providers have long known the problems Google faces with providing in-depth visitor information to advertisers on their AdWords mobile platform. The operators hold this user information dearly, since it is likely to be the single most important factor they can leverage in the race to prevent Google from dominating mobile search and the associated ad spend.

Bango Analytics is latest in the new breed of mobile analytics solutions that provide more in-depth information than Google Analytics or AdWords conversion tracking can. Mobile Analytics from Amethon is another such product.

Bango Analytics
Mobile Analytics from Amethon

Advanced mobile analytics systems from providers like Bango can provide advertisers extensive information about how visitors interact with their site. These systems use ‘off the wire’ capture technology and are integrated into the mobile operator or content provider/aggregator’s network and can therefore mine much more information than a JavaScript or cookie-based system like Google Analytics and AdWords. The information these advanced systems provide can include:

• Number of unique visitors per day
• What phones the visitors use to access the site
• What networks in which countries the visitors come from
• Most popular content
• Referring search terms
• Total return from a marketing campaign

Data from these systems is presented near real-time, unlike Google Analytics, which can take a few hours to update or Google AdWords conversion tracking, which takes as much as 24 hours to update.

As the race for dominance of the mobile platform heats up, the other players in the market are arming themselves with every possible weapon to fight Google.

While Google drives the majority share of mobile search traffic, very few advertisers will consider spending their ad budgets elsewhere. However, if the other providers liaise or a new dominant player arises with an ad platform that includes superior tracking and targeting capabilities, Google could end up losing favour with advertisers.

Above: Screenshot of Bango Analytics