Google Analytics has launched an interesting new section called Benchmarking and I have been playing with it our some of our clients sites today. Benchmarking compares how one website’s statistics compare against aggregate data from sites of similar sizes within an industry Industry category. The statistics compared are the number of visits, Page Views, Pages per Visit, Bounce Rates, Average Time on Site and New Visits data - it’s all pretty cool.

Nit picking you would say that the negative points would be that the comparative statistics are only against other websites that have chosen to enable data sharing in Google Analytics for this purpose - so those sites that don’t regularly check their analytics or are not proactive, or use other systems, will not be shown. The other potential problem being which industry category your site is compared to. Although you can chose your industry category from a pretty extensive list the categories are still quite broad for our clients, for example, two of the sites I looked at were both hostel sites and they fit into the “hotels and accommodations” category, which seems a bit broad.

One of the nice uses I see however will be to provide a sanctity check when you think things might be really good or vice versa. For example, if you have a month where you are experiencing much less visits you can at least draw some comparisons from the rest of the broader industry according to the Google Benchmarking tool to see how the rest of the industry is fairing.

Below is a screen shot of how the Benchmarking tool looks:

This is not really that special but last week I mentioned it and have been too busy this week with so much going on to make the promised post.

Visiting Google is Sydney is something anyone can do and there are great people there like Jasper Vallance who are more than happy to talk to you about the ins and outs of search advertising and some of the Google products that suit NZ and Australian travel companies. But your real reason for visiting should just be to see how cool a place it is - it is kind of what you expect. Reception is pretty much all white with splashes of the Google colours in carpet occasionally around the room in sharp contrast. You sign in as a visitor and it is all done on the computer via a digital pen which you then sign on and its prints out your name tag. It is not really that special either, and there are probably millions of companies that have this - but somehow the Google process just seemed cooler. I noticed they had framed pictures on the walls of all the logo variations they do for special events etc over time - but did not really want to nose around too much - they looked cool though.

And then of course there is the famous Google food. Jasper showed us around the on-site cafeteria which was just cool. Pool table, a massive fridge full of drinks (beer with your meeting anyone) and another fridge full of snacks. He explained that they are all treated with full lunches. No wonder everyone looked so “cool”.

That’s about it really. We talked for a good hour about cost-per-click campaigns and apparently a click through rate of 2% on your keywords in good in the travel industry (I think I floored him when I said we are getting 17% on one ad group and 26% on another for the campaign we are running for The Park Lodge at the moment) and he also told us some really staggering figure about the increased conversion from search engine listings if both and organic and a paid ad appear on the same page - really interesting stuff.

This has been around for ever - but it is still brilliant. For all us SEO geeks it is tres amusement. What if you got to build the Google home page? http://www.meangene.com/google/design_for_google.html

It’s official, as of 18th July Google Analytics has discontinued their Version 1 interface for the new look and feel. While there are many many analytics programmes on the market none delivers the quality and depth of information as Google Analytics for the price - which by the way is free!

The new interface is slick and so easy to use. Take the world map for example, the graphical presentation of where your website visitors are coming from is extremely intuitive; clicking on a country generates a close-up view with breakdown of visitors by region and/or city. Or the site overlay tool, which provides a real view of your web page with all the links from that page and a graphical and textual view of the number of clicks and the percentage of clicks that link makes up of clicks from that page. The overlaying of information onto your web page makes understanding the web statistics almost child’s’ play.

But perhaps the most valuable feature is the ‘Goals & Funnels’. Goals allow you to set up certain pages such as a booking confirmation or an enquiry page as a goal for users of your website. Funnels track the specific click path a user takes to reach your defined website goals. Goals and funnels can have specific monetary values attached, meaning you can track your websites financial performance as well - and we all know I have continually harped on about the importance of real measurable objectives in your website strategy.

So, thanks to Google for another great indispensable tool - the new interface is fantastic, and the functionality unbeatable - even for that price!

I have said this many times before - but the ‘new’ social Internet has a real risk that a publicity nightmare could blow up in blogs, forums, or review sites without your knowledge of it. I have stressed that businesses should be monitoring the greater social Internet for all mentions of their business.

Of course the best method I promote is subscription to our Xefeed product, which scans the Internet in it’s entirety including many of the social media sites such as Flickr (for images) and You Tube (for videos) as well as the blogoshpere for mention of your business itself or it’s products or services. This information is then repackaged and sent automatically to you - it can be published automatically on your website - or bad news can be separately highlighted to management or marketing to be dealt with quickly and efficiently.

For those not ready to take the leap into a full monthly subscription then at the very minimum you should have Google alerts coming into your email box at least weekly if not daily. Firstly, if you don’t have one already set up, then set up a Google account. From your account page select “Alerts” - in the right hand “My Services” menu. From there you can create an alert based on search terms (your company name, your own name, or even the most searched term for your business); you can select to receive the emails alerts for any amount of time from as they come up (i.e. as Google finds the term on a particular page) to daily, weekly or monthly. Google will send you an email notifying you of all the ‘new’ appearances of your search terms or activity in your search terms both on web pages and within blogs.

It is not completely accurate and you will find that you receive a lot of notifications that don’t relate to you in anyway (I get notified every time Julia Roberts gets mentioned somewhere on the web) but it is a great start and for anyone serious about business and the social Internet it is an essential tool. That is, if you are not all signed up for our wicked Xefeed product!

We knew it was coming but here it is today!!

Google has released it’s uber search engine, combining news, videos, images and other related results into the search results. What will the mean for those with good (or bad) search results. I have checked a number of search results for some of the keywords my clients work with and in the majority most seem relatively unaffected at this stage. However, we will research it over the day and during the weekend to gauge the full extent of the impact.

One thing it will mean is the importance of including richer media such as images and videos into your websites. More soon…