Introducing In-Page Analytics: Visual context for your Analytics data
Friday, October 15, 2010 | 9:07 AM
Labels: Announcements, Features, googlenew, Videos
When looking at Google Analytics reports, sometimes it’s difficult to visualize how visitors navigate on a given website page. To make this visualization easier, some users keep the website open in another browser tab so they can reference it while looking through reports. Others rely on the Site Overlay report in Google Analytics, which, admittedly, hasn’t worked as well it could.
Today, we’re happy to share with you a bit of what we’ve been working on to address this problem. We’re releasing a new feature into beta: In-Page Analytics. With In-Page Analytics, you can see your Google Analytics data superimposed on your website as you browse.
Take In-Page for a spin and let us know what you think. In-Page Analytics is still in beta, so some things in the report may not work perfectly yet. There’s a lot left to do, but there’s even more that we want to build going forward. In-Page is currently available for all English users of Google Analytics. We also have a demo video that walks you through the feature and how you might use it.
You’ll find the In-Page Analytics report in the Content section in your Google Analytics account, and it replaces Site Overlay. You can read more about In-Page in the Google Analytics Help Center. Let us know what you think and how you’re using it!
89 comments:
Scoosh said...
Been using it today and found it an excellent tool to show clients. Sometimes the GA Interface can be intimidating if you don't like looking at data (which we do)
This allows the client to see stats in a meaningful way as it relates to their own site. Like it.
(Scoosh)
10:09 AM
Nate said...
Okay, this is beautiful, but how do you shut it off once you're done with it? Clicking "Close" always drops you back into GA's UI, but I just want to experience my site without the in page tool turned on at all. Everytime I reopen my site in a tab or browser the in-page utility shows up too.
Any help on this?
10:31 AM
Ms. Ileane said...
I like this. I think it's a big improvement over "site overlay". Thanks!
10:37 AM
Trevor Claiborne said...
@Nate
The overlay should only show up while you have In-Page report open. Once you close it, that shouldn't be an issue.
I agree that the expected behavior for Close should be returning you to your site. I'll see what the eng team can do.
10:39 AM
Kraig Guffey said...
It works great for Clicks, but when trying to view goals, revenue, or transactions it's not showing anything. Any advice?
11:04 AM
Dave Nielsen said...
Simply amazing; immediately usable and understandable; makes work fun. This is how technology is supposed to be.
11:07 AM
Jon Schleuss said...
Yay, I'm just stoked that there's improvements on this. I really hated the cookie that lasted in Safari on Content Overlay.
11:08 AM
Nate said...
Trevor,
I seem to be getting a user experience that is a bit different than your screen captures indicate. When I clicked the in-page analytics link, it defaulted to "Full View" mode and then became impossible to close even when I closed the browser and open a new one.
I think there's a bug here somewhere. I'm using IE8, in case that helps.
Nate
12:18 PM
Trevor Claiborne said...
Hey Nate,
I'll pass this along to the eng team to see if there's an issue here.
12:28 PM
kelly said...
My site has multiple links to the same content on the home page and on many other pages. In-Page Analytics does not distinguish one link from another on the page so, so I cannot tell which link is generating the most clicks. At first glance it looks like all positions for the same link get the same percentage of the clicks, but in reality it is just counting the percentage of clicks the destination is getting.
Having GA track each link (by using javascript to add an ID to each link on the site) would make this far more valuable.
I guess for me I can see all of this data in a concise form on the more tabular reports. I would like to see data that really cannot be easily conveyed through the other reports such as click position, scroll depth heat maps, etc...
12:39 PM
kelly said...
"Having GA track each link (by using javascript to add an ID to each link on the site) would make this far more valuable."
I meant to say track each link on the page, so for instance on my home page, which has 3 links to our booking page, I would want it to track each of the 3 booking links separately. That would allow me to optomize the position of my links within a page.
12:42 PM
Max said...
12:46 PM
Dan said...
Hi Nate,
It sounds like your site has framebusting code in it, that prevents In-Page Analytics from opening inside a frame in the regular Google Analytics UI. For sites like this, we support a windowed, frameless mode where indeed there is a "Close" button at the top right corner. That explains the different experience you are getting.
Regarding using the site while In-Page Analytics is on: because of the way the feature works, it's either on or off within a browser session. If you want to use your site with the Analytics data in one window and without in another, we suggest using either a different browser for one of them or a temporary session, for example using Incognito mode in Chrome, InPrivate browsing in MSIE, or Private Browsing in Firefox.
If there's no need to run them in parallel, just make sure to turn off In-Page Analytics by clicking the "Close" button (or, in the case of the regular framed mode, "Back to Content Overview" above the report heading.
Hope this helps,
Dan
1:07 PM
Trevor Claiborne said...
Great feedback Kelly. Understand completely. As we said, there's a lot more we want to do with In-Page, so please keep the feedback coming.
Nate, Dan is one of the engineers on In-Page, fyi. Hope his answer helps.
1:34 PM
d2r said...
Keep getting the following error below. Doesn't work - is there something different you have to use for Tumblr? The website URL is the same for analytics and it works just fine normally, but not with this new in-page analytics.
-------
Oops... we could not connect to your website.
Please make sure that:
Your website is up and running.
Your pages have the Google Analytics tracking snippet correctly installed.
The "Website URL" profile setting correctly matches the actual page address.
1:57 PM
Longhand said...
I'm experencing the same bug in more sites:
GA response after loading the current website in the In Page Analytics report: "There are no pageviews recorded for this page. Try adjusting the date range or select an alternate page."
Anyway it's an excellent new feature, thanks!
2:04 PM
Longhand said...
@d2r:
+1
In some cases the report will work ok in another web browser.
3:00 PM
Craig Bailey said...
This is really nice. But it doesn't seem to work if you are accessing Analytics via Reporting from an MCC account.
4:06 PM
mdg33 said...
Still doesn;t work.
Seems to be just as faulty as the old one.
5:25 PM
becca said...
Love this new feature. Thank you.
6:14 PM
Paras said...
Looks like and excellent tool and would be great to use- only if I can.
I have 3-4 different websites and all I get for each of them is the following error:
"There are no pageviews recorded for this page. Try adjusting the date range or select an alternate page."
Please help!
9:22 PM
Devanshu M Bhatnagar said...
GA Rocks. It would be much help if we are getting a good amount of visitors on a single page. I will surely try on some of the shopping portals.
1:22 AM
wordpressak said...
This one is rock.. Love you Google..
1:32 AM
sharpy said...
When I click the link to in-page analytics I get an Internet Explorer security warning asking whether I want to view only the web page data that was delivered securely. If I say yes 'in-page analytics' never loads, if I say No all is OK.
1:37 AM
Werner said...
A major downside of the old site overlay was, that it didn't work, when individual sitenames were set.
Anybody knows if this changed?
2:56 AM
Tal Schwartz said...
Great to see Google focusing on In-Page Analytics.
Site Overlay is just one out of 4 types of In-Page Analytics reports which include:
1. Session Playback
2. Heatmaps
3. Site Overlays
4. In-Page Statistics
You can learn about "What is In-Page Analytics?" and how it can benefit you here: http://blog.clicktale.com/2010/08/27/what-is-in-page-analytics/
Tal Schwartz
ClickTale
11:23 AM
tarique said...
this is something really interesting and informative stuff.
yes its true that it is difficult to visualize visitors click through information, but in page feature has made is really easy, and i think it will help a lot in updating website content and layout.
thanks google. keep it up.
5:14 PM
side said...
If we were to use filters so that we can track our domain and subdomain as one site and as separate sites, (a change we are contemplating now), site overlay stops working.
(This is described in pp 199 -200 of Brian Clifton's "Advanced Web Metrics with Google Analytics 2nd Ed."
Will this new In-page Analytics stop working also?
Please reply asap, as I was about to recommend this change to an important client, who's currently tracking domains and subdomains separately.
6:36 PM
Kaspar said...
Big wow indeed. As it was told in video that many features still on the way to come, I'm really looking forward for features to get information how much visitors scroll down and information about filling in forms. But yes - I'm so glad to see the In-Page (Y)
3:45 AM
Vizael said...
Works perfectly for several sites, but fails with Picasa Web Albums. It can't load site on the right side of In-Page Analytics page. (I use URL like http://picasaweb.google.com/username and it works fine for any other function of GA)
5:45 AM
Paul said...
Still no data in any other field other than clicks. This has been a long standing issue.
Still a big improvement on the previous Site Overlay.
12:45 AM
David Hefendehl said...
I love this new report it is tremendously useful. My absolute favourite is the "X% clicked below". I wrote an article about it and explain why I love the clicked below part so much. http://blog.pod1.com/e-commerce/new-feature-in-google-analytics-insights-just-got-better/
Can't wait to see when you implement the distinction between the actual links even if they point to the same URL.
1:36 AM
cenxanane said...
we have two accounts, one of them is just for sub-domain.
GA response after loading the landing page in the In Page Analytics report: "There are no pageviews recorded for this page. Try adjusting the date range or select an alternate page."
on the other hand, for sub-domain it woks fine.
how can I fix it?
1:40 AM
Vithe said...
I'm experiencing problems with this new feature though it is in beta so to be expected!
When I click the "in-page analytics" link I just see what appears to be a half-loaded page. I can see the displaying, from and with more than drop downs but that's about it.
I am using Chrome 6.0.472.63 but it also happens in Firefox.
Looking forward to seeing it in action!
1:41 AM
jlopez@rumbo.com said...
As Kraig Guffey commented, it suffers the same old problem of the site overlay: conversions always show zero. Is it expected to be solved? Thanks
1:47 AM
Bruno Hug said...
I agree with Kelly ("In-Page Analytics does not distinguish one link from another on the page so, so I cannot tell which link is generating the most clicks"). It doesn't track links with different anchors (#1,#2) neither, and I'm talking about links to others pages.
But still, it's much better than before, so keep on GG.
2:40 AM
Robbie said...
I am having the same trouble getting rid of the report overlay once I've tried it. Even after clicking out of it and logging out of Google Analytics completely, the overlay comes back when I return to my site.
Help!
OS X / Chrome browser
7:26 AM
MarkO said...
Would love to try it but doesn't seem to work at all for me for any site. I tried accessing via my MCC and through individual accounts. Tried chrome and firefox. I just get the frame outline and a see through box, nothing ever loads. Checked the analytics settings and all appears ok re domain name and home page.
Any ideas what else to try?
10:19 AM
mef-lib said...
This is just what I neeed. Unfortunately, all I get is "page not found." It's the same in IE and Firefox. I think it's probably a security issue, but I'm not sure what settings to change.
10:27 AM
Sangeetha John said...
Wow! Great. Now Google started to figure out the report with the site. Don't want to do a comparison with the site and the report and really, this will save our time. Thanks a lot Google. I am eagerly waiting for the more advanced features.
9:41 PM
Desiree said...
This looks fantastic, I'll definitely be playing around with this in the next few days! Can't wait for the added feature of tracking which link got more clicks if there are multiple links to the same page. Good Work!
3:01 AM
estellaEffects said...
OMG
GOt To TRY It NOWWW
Is there coding reqd?Video is slow for me, anyways will wait for download.
3:54 AM
YourDigitalSpace said...
Thanks for this new addition :)
4:15 AM
Tombelli said...
I get the following error: There are no pageviews recorded for this page. Try adjusting the date range or select an alternate page.
However, the page has over 79,000 page views in the current date range - but I still get this message. Any suggestions??
1:51 PM
David said...
Hello, new overlay (inPage) doesnt show up the data on pages beggining https://... It was running in the past. Tried it in FireFox and IE and few days
3:51 AM
Jim said...
Big improvement. I would be great to have a way to change the display from % to actual. % is misleading at times because the overlay doesn't always see all of the links on the page.
7:28 AM
sharpy said...
I can't navigate around using the links on my page - everytime I go to click on a link, whilst in 'in-page analytics' - the summary data for that link comes up so preventing me clicking on the underlying link. The summary data obscures the actual link - it would be good to be able to navigate around whilst in in-page analytics.
12:23 PM
Love said...
this is awesome! highly useful
5:07 AM
Marek said...
Nice feature, but still with some problems:
- outbound links are not tracked
- footer and header links are not tracked
- switching from clicks to transaction, goals etc. doesn't give any results
- and I've got the same problem as Nate: Clicking "Close" always drops you back into GA's UI, but everytime I reopen my site in a tab or browser the in-page utility shows up too. Restarting the browser does the job, however (Firefox 3.6.11)
7:42 AM
adair2 said...
I get this:
Access denied. Please try relaunching site overlay from the report. [Error: 20001]
Relaunching does not work
8:21 AM
eli said...
It didn't work on one of my websites. I don't know why?? And it works on another website only if I use IE.
9:38 AM
Kit said...
I have some SharePoint sites and when trying to use this feature some sites delivered a 'page not found' error while others displayed the page but with no usage data. In the former, I had my default page listed as 'default.aspx' and in the latter it was listed as /pages/default.aspx. The solution: change this to 'pages/default.aspx' (no leading forward slash). I hope this helps others experiencing this issue!
Terrific feature by the way, simple and elegant.
4:15 PM
Chad Dorsey said...
I'm having the same problem as Robbie and Nate. I closed out of my Analytics account, and close the overlay using the button, but I'm still seeing this load every time I click on the site. Earlier it wouldn't stay there, but would disable actions on the page for about 2-3 seconds with every page I viewed, and placed a semi-opaque overlay over the page for about a second each time. Now the whole thing is back, despite deleting some cookies. GA is wonderful, but this behavior is frustrating…
6:22 PM
Chad Dorsey said...
Sorry – forgot to list specs: OS 10.6.4, Chrome 7.0.517.41…
6:24 PM
bluesnapper said...
Hi Trevor. First look - so much better than previous overlay functionality. Great job.
Like an earlier comment, I can see only click data (no transaction, revenue or goal data) - I assume this is a bug? Please confirm.
I'm also intrigued as to how you will differentiate between clicks on different links to the same url. I suppose you could take into account anchor text/image but what about when the anchor text/images are identical?
1:58 AM
Matthew said...
Very interesting stuff. It might just be me, but the feature doesn't seem to work on https pages?
2:13 AM
Destroy&Bury said...
I have onmnouseover javascript handling image tooltips on several links and they all show the same percentages even though my readers don't click on it. Would be great if true clicks can be showed, and if percentages are seperate for diff links/content handled by the same script.
Great job on this, btw.
12:14 AM
Milco Landtman said...
Very useful addition - thanks for this!
What I would love to see added to the functionality is the clicks on exit links and the clicks on AdSense ads.
12:30 AM
Milco Landtman said...
Forgot to mention this in my previous post :) I am now looking at click percentages, but it would be great, and to me much more useful, to see the actual click numbers instead.
12:37 AM
Steffen said...
I've changed _trackPageview(opt_pageURL) on my site for links to .pdf or .xls files from /virtual + filename (e.g. /downloads/contract.pdf => /virtual/downloads/contract.pdf) to only the filename with the expectation that the site overlay shows the clicks on these file links. The _trackPageview argument is now exatly as the href of the link (/downloads/contract.pdf) but the clicks are not shown. Is this a known issue?
11:33 AM
Mitch said...
1. Can't shut it off once you've looked at a site with it. Wow, that sucks.
2. Everyone realizes that this is just a sexier version of Site Overlay, right? I mean this thing does not bridge the gap in any way between what GA previously offered and heatmap tools. Doesn't identify unique URLs for clicks, doesn't show the exact position of the click... this is a tool for people who just want easy stats, regardless of the fact that they're misleading and that better data is available in the clickstream reports.
6:26 AM
mtwstudios said...
I am also unable to turn this off after I activated it. When I load up the target page outside of analytics, I get the overlay, and hitting "Close" just sends me to the Analytics page (without turning the overlay off!) Logging completely out of analytics doesn't do any good either. Using OSX/Chrome.
10:37 AM
Spanishgringo said...
I think the error that people are seeing is due to using Virtual URLs in the trackPageview function.
The same thing happens on all of our sites where we use Virtual URLs for measuring our pages.
This is probably a tough problem to fix, but my suggestion is that they try to relate the referrer URL to the virtual URL when the gifs are called. doing it that way they could show most pages correctly (assuming there is not too much ajax on the original page generating lots of virtual URLs from the same referring URL).
5:13 AM
Jodi said...
It's not working. I get an error message saying,
"Oops... we could not connect to your website.
Please make sure that:
* Your website is up and running.
* Your pages have the Google Analytics tracking snippet correctly installed.
* The "Website URL" profile setting correctly matches the actual page address."
The site is up and running. I just looked at it and replied to a comment.
6:15 AM
mail said...
Love this new feature. Thank you.
8:36 AM
Nate said...
Robbie, Chad, mtwstudio.
What I've experienced in follow-up tests is that completely closing the browser (all non-related tabs included) and reopening a completely new browser allows for standard browsing experience on my site. It seems like the overlay functionality sort of embeds itself within the browser experience across all tabs, even if GA is not open on one of the tabs.
I'd be curious if this is the same experience you all have.
I have not tried to open GA on a separate active browser to see if it impacts a previously active one, but if that works, it may be the best workaround.
Nate
8:02 AM
Nate said...
Just tried opening GA's IPA in a browser separate from my existing active browser (as Dan suggests above), and it infiltrated my previously active browser as well.
Honestly, at this point, the inconvenience of the overlay takeover overshadows the benefits of the tool. I likely won't be using it much.
Hopefully this is something Google will modify before the final production version is released.
Nate
8:25 AM
Katherine said...
Agree that it's great and a really easy way to get a quick pic of your site, but not being able to turn it off is really annoying.
I've cleared all my cookies, logged out of Analytics, opened new tabs and retyped my site address and still I get the in-page view.
When I click close, I want GA to return me to my normal site view. Surely not that hard?
6:55 AM
D said...
Just discovered the feature yesterday, and it's made such a difference in explaining data to a current client. Visualizing data (thanks @Scoosh) versus looking at numbers makes a world of difference.
Anticipating the possibility of using advanced filters, and not just goals...possibly forthcoming?
Well done, GA Team--it looks great.
10:13 AM
mks said...
I also cannot shut it off. Tried everything -- even after clicking out of it and logging out of Google Analytics completely, the overlay comes back when I return to my site.
Very frustrating! What can be done, please? I am using Firefox. Thank you.
3:57 PM
afagen said...
also can't seem to get rid of it despite clicking all the close buttons. How do you turn it off?
8:05 AM
Tom Funk said...
Missing revenue data: We have a number of ecommerce sites, and in these reports, Revenue data disappears completely after January 25, 2010. In Page Analytics views for older time period show revenue data, but after that date, it's all zeroes -- for several different sites. I have heard this from other ecommerce merchants as well.
11:54 AM
Atal said...
Hi,
Nice feature.
Can we use in-page analytics by APIs ? - if yes, please suggest the link.
Cheers
Atal
7:42 AM
Heidi J said...
Please make it so you can turn this off. It gets really annoying.
7:07 PM
DMan said...
This In-page Analytics is awesome and I have been using it a lot. My problem is that almost always there is more than one link on the page to the same destination. I assume there are a lot of others who need to see each individual link percentage and you mention that this is planned for future release.
Would you care to elaborate how this is coming along and if there is any approximate ETA on it?
Thank you for your time
Dmitry
3:27 PM
tom.schatz said...
Has anyone been able to make this work with links to pages on subdomains?
Does anyone know of a detailed description as to why this does not work?
Are there any plans to make this work?
Thank you.
8:16 AM
tom.schatz said...
I've noticed that this does not seem to measure the actual link clicks on a page but rather the URL of the links.
For example I have two links on a page that point to the same URL and each show the same percentage of clicks, although I know that wouldn't be accurate as one is a highly visible link and the other is much more subdued.
Perhaps showing where users are actually clicking wasn't the intention or perhaps I have something set up incorrectly.
Could someone verify that what I'm seeing is accurate?
Thank you.
8:20 AM
beno said...
Great tool Google. Kudos
3:08 AM
Analytics said...
This is an excellent tool but I don't see where people are clicking. I try it on Window IE, Chrome, Firefox, Max, Safari, Chrome and Firefox. I toggle on the cloud icon and nothing happens.
12:17 PM
Dougal Cameron said...
NEED TO BE ABLE TO TURN IT OFFFFFFFF! I have tried everything, and PS the suggestions here do not help at all. After several days now, I will be canceling analytics account unless someone can tell me how to remove it forever. It is just not worth the hassle.
8:12 AM
optimike said...
Great feature - but like everyone said, let me turn it off without closing my browser.
What genius decided the Close button should actually redirect you to google analytics?
Anytime I browse my website, the overlay shows up and I can't get rid of it. Worse, it ruins the edit overlay bar in concrete5, so I can't edit my website.
Turn off.
3:19 PM
Beautify Your Home said...
It won't shut off!!
It's a great feature, but it keeps coming up after I close out of Google Analytics.
Can't get any work done.
Please help.
10:00 AM
Ashley Harnett said...
I want to be able to turn this off, it is really annoying me...
3:17 AM
Allison Shops said...
I can't get it to turn off either. Very annoying.
10:03 AM
Devesh said...
in-page analytics not working in new version.
4:07 AM
Jeremy said...
We use this for our public site, and our marketing team loves it.
Question though. Will it work with a site users need to log in to?
Thanks in advance! :)
1:29 PM
David Kizler said...
Help, I clicked in page analytics and now I can not get it off my browser (safari). Looks like many others have the same problem and I can't find a good answer. I'm using safari and don't want an in page google analytics report (which isn't even working) every time I'm working on my site. thanks, David
8:26 AM
La-Juice said...
Hi, I am having the same problem in firefox 8.0, I cannot turn the feature off now and I don't want to see it every time. The close button must closes out the tab
11:07 AM
Alex Zorach said...
This is a great feature, but the overlay is creepy, and having it come up onsolicited (even when google analytics is open in another window) is invasive.
How does the browser even allow this sort of thing? I just wanted a clean browser, how did it like snake / hack its way into this new browser tab?
This creeps me out and I want this feature removed ASAP.
6:34 AM
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