An update on the new version of Google Analytics
Wednesday, January 18, 2012 | 3:50 PM
Since May of last year we’ve been working on a new version of Google Analytics and quickly adding new features and functionality to provide you with fast access to the insights you need.
We’re extremely pleased with the new capabilities around multi-channel measurement, real-time analytics, flow visualization and improved device reporting to name a few. Our goal was to create a faster, more intuitive platform for the future and I think we’ve met many of these goals.
Before we fully move to the new version we’re ensuring that you have the key functions you’re used to and which enables GA to be integral to your organization. We’re working hard on some priority features - email scheduling and PDF export as a top priority, alongside profile copying and dashboard sharing - and want to let you know that we’ll only fully be moving over to the new version once these are in place.
We’ve collected a lot of feedback on things you love and things you miss - but if there is still something you just can’t live without let us know by filling in this survey.
We’re excited to bring you more in 2012 - we have a lot on our to do list - so keep reading and I hope to hear from you so we can continue to make GA the most intuitive, useful analytics tool available for marketers and site owners today.
Posted by Phil Mui, Group Product Manager, Google Analytics
44 comments:
Jonathan Wold said...
Thank you for all your hard work! Google Analytics has been a huge help over the years and I'm looking forward to continuing to watch it grow.
6:36 PM
mrclm said...
I'd like to see (like in the old version) the dashboard screen with an overview of all your sites using Analytics. That way at a glance I can see if I need/want to look deeper into something. The new version requires me to go into each individual site's set of analytics, and when you have 4 or 5 it is quite annoying, and I can only imagine for people with far more sites than that which they track.
8:34 PM
LMS said...
I must say, its gonna help me a lot... Thanks for the update and keeping integrating such updates...
8:50 PM
Brad Heap said...
The PDF export coming back is brilliant.
It would be nice to have the links from the website you select on the "accounts home" page go to the dashboard by default rather than the Visitors Overview page.
8:57 PM
GodsBoy said...
I can not wait for the pdf export en email scheduling to work
9:25 PM
Drachsi said...
Will I have to change all my existing Analytic codes, and does it integrate with Google+
Drachsi
9:53 PM
Emil Stenström said...
You are doing great work improving GA!
The only thing I'm missing is the overview on the start page, from the old version. You could log in to your account, and see at a glance, which sites that where gaining in traffic, and which that was not.
Please bring that back.
11:17 PM
Antonio Ooi said...
Right until today, I still find that the new GA does not able to provide up-to-time data when the current date (today's date) is included into the selected data range. Sometimes, the new GA even auto-unselect the current date after clicking the Apply button. I wonder why the old version can do it and the new version cannot? This is why I keep using the old version of GA.
11:28 PM
Eric Binek said...
Thanks Google Analytics Team for keeping on the product. real-time analytics sounds awesome to me.
I agree with Emil Stenström. Please give us a overview back on the startpage.
12:22 AM
AndrewM said...
my team love the PDF export reports that I schedule for them as it really makes them feel positive about their marketing activities when they can see the response data.
can't wait for it to return!
12:26 AM
youse said...
12:58 AM
Yousaf Sekander said...
Email scheduling and PDF export should have been sorted by now!
1:00 AM
JElder said...
I've had issues with RegEx expressions causing crashes in the custom reporting. The same expressions work in the old version, so hopefully this can be resolved.
1:11 AM
The Joy Of Calm said...
I agree with the others who want the old Overview page to come back - I want to see how my sites are changing by percentage month on month.
Everything else is great though!
1:19 AM
Fran said...
Have completed survey with my feedback! So happy you are including the PDF feature! That makes my life so much easier.
I've also requested to add back in the ability to click through to metrics from the overview screen (e.g. visits, pageviews) and see a breakdown by day or week. In the new version currently - you can only see this in the graph. Unless I've missed something?
I agree that an overview screen for different sites would be very useful too.
Thanks!
1:32 AM
Testbloggen said...
The PDF-export was the thing that kept me using the old version, since my customers need that.
Now it is perhaps time to move on to the new interface!
6:47 AM
Steve Magruder said...
Like others have said, I really miss the old Overview page and the monthly comparison figures across all my sites.
7:42 AM
Rodney said...
PLEASE DON'T GET RID OF THE OLD VERSION!!!
Couple things I'd like to see in the new.
1. The all accounts overview page included.
2. The conversions > goals > overview to show numbers for each goal just like the old version.
3. Events reporting more like the old version. I can't decipher what my event tracking is doing in the new version but the old version is crystal clear.
That being said, good job on everything else!
9:35 AM
Haandah said...
I love ability to navigate to a report with specific parameters, then toggle domains without disturbing the parameters.
I miss the content/topcontent $ Index column.
9:54 AM
flurdy said...
New version is good. Love the real time page.
But agree with many above that the lack of overview is tedious.
As it is the first page you go to initial impressions bad. Especially with the 2001esque menu selection to go into individual sites that replaced the overview.
10:17 AM
bizQuirk said...
I want to keep using the old analytics UI, but it keeps changing back. I hate the new analytics interface.
2:10 PM
Stephen Colebourne said...
The home page overview still looks like an alpha designed by a graduate rather than the home page of a major product from one of the worlds largest companies! A proper dashboard is the main missing feature and its crazy that Google continues to not acknowledge just how bad the UI of that page is.
3:54 PM
Top Breakout Stocks said...
What I don't like about the new Google Analytics is that it takes WAY more clicks to get info than before. For example it takes me 10 clicks from sign in to simply see how many pageviews Ive gotten for a website page for a specific day. I realize this is all in an attempt to "be like Apple" but come on, analytics users are NOT the general public, we like lots of data presented to us at once without having to click a million times to see everything.
4:39 PM
Stats UNECE said...
The only reason I don't use the new version is the lack of an overview page. Fix that, and I will be happy to switch.
12:15 AM
don said...
4:30 AM
don said...
Nice work on the new GA.
I agree with many of the above comments, the start page from the old GA was great. I have multiple sites and need to be able to view on one page which site has had traffic changes. Especially the smaller sites which I don't check up on unless there has been changes.
Also, the data, page views, visits by day for this week vs last week with percentage increase and decrease I need to be able to view this in a report not just a graph.
Links in Email alerts take me to the dashboard instead of straight to the custom alert page.
Thanks
4:33 AM
Lee said...
Overall, the new GA is great - We just NEED the % change over date ranges back so that we can see increase/decrease in metrics over tine.
4:52 AM
Stu said...
The Share Advanced Segment is not in the new version yet, will it be ported across?
6:44 AM
Michael Schlotfeldt said...
PDF export!! That was my request! :-)
1:32 PM
Stan Jensen said...
This is puzzling to me... when it says NEW VERSION and there is a link,
Does it mean to click on the link to go to the new version or does it mean it is the new version?
3:04 PM
Fashion Photographer said...
I can't believe Google is so BLINDLY ignoring all the requests to revert the dashboard back to the way it was in the old version... Can't you see that this is huge? I maintain about 25 websites with GA and I definitely don't have enough time to click through every report.
BRING BACK THE OLD DASHBOARD!
3:48 AM
TheOtherCraig said...
Bring back CONTENT BY TITLE.
My eCommerce site gets a small number of page views. I like to look at GA every morning to see which of my for-sale items were viewed. My titles are, of course, meaningful and descriptive.
In the old GA, I could go to:
Contents > Contents by Title
...to see what items folks had shopped and viewed.
But, no more.
The new GA seems to have no way for me to view pageviews by HTML Page Title. A big omission IMHO.
Please bring "Contents by Title" back! (or, if it is there somwhere, but invisible to me, please someone tell me how to access this info).
Thanks!
11:36 AM
TheOtherCraig said...
I agree: UI is pathetic.
It was not all that great in the old GA, even worse still in the new GA. Functional UI almost seems to have become a lost art.
Not sure if it is all the easy design tools that today's (young) designers grew up with , or what. But UI design — even at major sites like Google — seems to be going backward these last few years.
I started building sites, by hand, back about 1997, coming from backgrounds in graphic design and engineering. I still entirely code pages by hand in BBedit. Perhaps, in the same way that a 4x5 view camera forces one to slow down and think... No, I'm not suggesting any of us go back to film, just wish the UI folks would learn their craft before adding all the bells & whistles. [sorry for the rant]
The cool features of GA are definitely impressive.
Now, how about a better UI ... so we can access those features with a little less pain.
11:58 AM
Michael said...
Thanks for the hard work. The new version takes some time to get familiar with, but I'm liking it and would prefer to use it all the time when the PDF exports are ready.
Another request: I'd love to see an option to apply Advanced Segments to customized dashboards. That would make my life much easier and dashboards much more informative.
Thanks!
7:58 AM
basruttenfans said...
I must say, I'm enjoying the new analytics and think that the real time reporting is an awesome feature. I do think that one thing that could be improved is that you can't really get a sense of what all of your sites are doing at a glance. The feature I preferred about the old analytics was the ability to check basic info about multiple sites as you log in. Most of my sites have traffic that doesn't fluctuate wildly so I wouldnt want to go into them one at a time but the problem is that if you suddenly have a traffic spike on a site you're not actively monitoring, you won't be aware until you've missed som possible opportunities. So keep up the good work but maybe just include somthing like a unique visitor dashboard that shows all sites at once.
Thanks
Jonathan
3:14 AM
Albania Properties said...
I still do prefer the old version as I am used to navigating around it. Might take some time to get used to the new version.
3:35 AM
Roman said...
I dont know about the others, but I kept using the old version since the new one was launched. And that says something to you, Google.
3:33 AM
Raymond Parker said...
I've tried using this new version (without referring to the old one) for a few weeks now, but I just keep running into walls.
Just now, for instance, I just want to click on the page's bounce rate and get a graph. No luck.
So many other things I can't find without multiple clicks.
I give up. Going back to the old version that gave me everything I needed, in a simple format.
7:17 PM
Monty Ma said...
Please refrain from sunsetting the old version without offering all the equivalent features of the old version, e.g. exporting in Excel for all daily numbers, user admin for all separate profiles under a profile grouping, the bug that displays error when clicking from standard to custom reporting, etc.
The new version, though with much improvement, is NOT up to the standard of the old version yet.
9:44 AM
sajith said...
We’re extremely pleased with the new capabilities around
(HA HA HA HA What a joke. Some body is claiming extremly pleased after wrecking ome good software. Too much sh*t in new version. And old version is 200% better. I can see all users in all forums, supports, blogs are abusing you people. Still you are posting such a joke. Trash the new interface as a toilet paper is more usefull that your new interface
2:36 PM
pce said...
Could we please have an updated estimate on the availability of the email scheduling and PDF export features? It's been four months and counting since the "few weeks" statement from Nov. 1 and six weeks since this post mentioning it as a "top priority". Even my board of directors is getting impatient, and they move really slow. . . I will need to pursue other options by the end of this month. Please help!
5:12 AM
Kyle said...
Yes, as some have already said, please bring the account overview page back! Love the new GA but find myself checking the old version as well, to see an at-a-glance snapshot of all the 15+ sites I'm managing.
10:47 AM
Ian said...
Hi all,
The PDF and email scheduling functionality is now available in the new Google Analytics. We recently posted to the GA blog with more details. Here is a link to the post.
http://analytics.blogspot.com/2012/04/share-reports-by-email-and-export-to.html
Ian, Google Analytics Team
12:58 PM
PeterD said...
Why oh why did you change it??? It takes way too long to find basic information that could be reviewed with just a couple of clicks using the old version. With this one information is buried below various links, and all the useful info is virtually never displayed on a single useful summary page. Intuitive and helpful is one thing this new system certainly is not. Bin it and reinstate the old one.
8:59 AM
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