19 Nov
2012

This is Why – Episode 5.1

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Over on the grumpyhawk website is the newest episode of This is Why.

grumpyhawk’s getting a little long in the tooth these days and lamenting his 33rd birthday. But I tell him all about the great stuff he can get like Hoverrounds and Early Bird Specials.

Then there’s talk of the newest video games we’re playing, and a point where I just decide I’m going to take over the podcast to shoe-horn my dissertation on the history of late-90′s pro-wrestling.

The problem is we spent so much time talking about being old men in the first part of the podcast, that we ended up having to make this week a two-parter. Next time there will be more talk of video games. There will be a quick preview of Hitman: Absolution which will already be out by the time part 2 airs.

Until then, feel free to kill 45 minutes with grumpyhawk and I as we gum our meals, and yell at kids while in our bathrobes and sock garters.

You can go to grumpyhawk.com to play the episode, or you can download it directly here.

 

2 Nov
2012

Google Maps Not Passing any Referral Data?

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It’s been common knowledge for a while that on iOS 6, Google has not been passing referral data when performing a search on an iPhone. And with all the new SSL encrypted search, Google stopped passing organic keyword data for users who were logged into their Google accounts.

Now, it looks like Google Places (or Google Maps, or whatever they want to call themselves this week) isn’t passing any referral data at all. If anything, traffic from a listing on Google Places is reporting to Google Analytics as direct traffic.

After a big local push from a client, and trying to use Google Analytics to clean up some referral data, I started looking for an increase in traffic from the URL maps.google.com, and what I found over the last two months was startling.

 

Wait, I’m not this bad at my job am I? How could we not have any visits from Google Maps? Zero! Keep in mind, this client isn’t using any filters to aggregate any and all Google Places traffic. We’re looking at a Raw Data profile that isn’t using any filters at all. Traditionally, maps listings came in from the referring domain maps.google.com.

 

Admittedly, that’s still not a whole lot of traffic.

I started investigating further, performing a search on Google Places for specific locations, and according to the Google Analytics debugger for Chrome, Google Places is not passing referral data. Because all examples of local search involve pizza and plumbers, we shall continue said trend. Looking for pizza places in Nashville, I click on a random link to view the listing (Incidentally, this isn’t random. Bella Napoli  is not a client. They were just the first local pizza place I could find with Google Analytics on it.)

 

When clicking on the display URL from the maps listing, the Google Analytics Debugger tells me that there is no referring URL.

 

That’s normally where the referring URL should go. This is literally what gets sent to the Google Analytics servers. On any unfiltered data, the entire referring URL and domain reports there first. From the Google Places maps listing, the referring URL is completely blank. No referral data is being sent to Google Analytics.

When I click on the link from the Google Maps sidebar…

 

I get the same result. No referral data.

 

Even when I sign out of my Google Account and try the same search, the same thing happens. It’s blank. I only get referral data when I click on More Info on the pinpoint maps listing and go to the Google Plus page.

 

Now there’s referral data.

 

I wanted to see how this was working for Bing maps and for Yahoo local as well, just to see what the other maps systems were passing along.

Here’s what the Bing Maps listing looks like, and which link I clicked.

 

See? Referral info.

 

How about Yahoo Maps?

 

Yup, referral data.

 

At first glance this looks like it’s an SSL issue. Both Bing and Yahoo maps are on http URLs, where as Google Places and Google + pages default to https whether a visitor is signed in or not. But when the link is clicked from the Google + page, the referral that is passed by the Google Analytics cookie is http.

 

So, if this were a part of Google’s SSL privacy policy stuff, it looks like there is somewhat of a double standard. It won’t pass referral data from Maps which is under SSL, but it will pass referral data from Google + pages which is also under SSL.

Has anyone else noticed this, and/or are there any explanations?

 

2 Nov
2012

This is Why: Episode 4

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This is totally how we normally look all the time.

 

Just up today is the latest episode of This is Why. For the uninitiated, grumpyhawk and I were sitting around making all sorts of jokes about nerd stuff when he asked, “wouldn’t it be great if we recorded our conversations?”

Knowing how well this works out for everyone else who’s ever done it, I was all “Absolutely!”

And we began our own little podcast in our own little corner of the world.

This week’s episode is fairly Halloween themed. We discussed our half-baked Halloween costume ideas, and our last Halloween together which was pretty great for a couple of nerds. Segueing with cosplay, grumpyhawk also discusses the Austin Comic-Con. With the 25th anniversary of Star Trek: The Next Generation, grumpyhawk got to go around and ask all the nerd questions he wanted. He had a great time, but since he completely avoided WWE Champion CM Punk, then I have no investment at all. The one thing I wanted him to do and he avoids it.

grumpyhawk….THIS IS WHY!

To hear the latest episode, head on over to the Episode 4 page.

If you want, you can also explore the This is Why archives in case you’re really looking for some outdated Doctor Who discussions.

29 Oct
2012

Google Announces Universal Analytics: Totally Steals My Thunder

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Here I was feeling super smart after my Pubcon talk about using Google Analytics to measure offline conversions, visitors across multiple devices and data sets, when Google officially announced Universal Analytics via its analytics blog today at the GA Summit.

So, thanks for that, Thunder Stealers.

Universal Analytics

At it’s core, Universal Analytics is a change in tracking protocols. Justin Cutroni had the first real update about what all of this means. Essentially companies with Universal Analytics can now use a new measurement protocol. As long as it is in the right format, it doesn’t matter where the data comes from (CRM, call center, point of sale) it can be sent to Google Analytics.

Session Based vs User Based

Google Analytics is inherently session based. Universal Analytics changes the focus of tracking from session based to user based; the idea is creating a visitor ID and associating it with all the activity. Instead of having to do this via custom variable, with Universal Analytics this can now be accomplished when the library is called.

Currently, when Google Analytics Tracking Code fires, it calls the ga.js library. This library gives the visitors browser a session ID, and all the information is stored in the browser cookie. If the visitor clears their cookies, then the visitor ID and session ID resets to zero.

Universal Analytics calls a different library, analytics.js. No matter where this library is called from, all the associations are now made at the server level of the library. It will need to be something customized beforehand (like an anonymous customer ID). Once that association is made, all of the session data is stored by the server.

The great part about this is that it’s not dependent on browser cookies, so a visitor might clear their cookies but the visitor ID is still retained.

Tracking with and without Browser Cookies

Large Data Sets

Universal Analytics is huge as it is starting to get away from session based data and instead focuses on the user. This also means one can call the analytics.js library from anywhere, the user session is tracked.

This also means data can now be imported to Google Analytics! All be it with restrictions (personal blah blah blah).

This is only a very little bit of what’s going on, and all of its implications. Justin Cutroni and the guys at Analytics Pros have much more detailed information and much more current information. I wanted to make sure we have the most relevant and easily digestible information.

Applying

What was initially thought of as an update for only organizations that use Google Analytics Premium is actually available for anyone that is approved. Keep in mind, this is for companies with large data sets. If you’ve ever listened to me discuss using custom variables to associate offline data, this is the way to do that without having to worry when a visitor clears their cookies. I’m excited about this.

What This Means Right Now

You don’t have to do anything right now. You can apply for the Universal Analytics Beta, but that does not necessarily mean approval.

There was initially some concern about changing your Google Analytics Tracking Code from ga.js to analytics.js. This only needs to be done if you get accepted into Universal Analytics. As of right now, no one needs to change anything.

26 Oct
2012

Everyone is Responsible for Data

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I love tag managers for web analytics, don’t get me wrong. This is going to be the wave of the futre, and it’s making everyone’s lives much easier. But I take issue with the sentiment that it now frees us from the clutches and whims of the IT department. Analytics for some reason is still isolated from other forms of online marketing; it’s not SEO, it’s not PPC, CMOs only like the idea of it when it supports their opinions, and devs still hate it. So, yeah the less interaction we have with the devs the better.

Analytics works best when everyone has a stake in the outcome. We should continue to use tag managers, but behing happy we are getting to interact with other departments less is a curse, not a blessing. If the business is online, and the business spent crazy amounts of money on an enterprise level analytics platform, every department needs to make sure it’s working properly, like the printer. When something is wrong with the printer that everyone uses, people go apeshit until it’s fixed.

That’s exactly the reaction everyone should have if Omniture is not firing properly.

Since Halloween is approaching, I’ll regale you of one of my many in-house horror stories. Three weeks into a job I walked into work on a Monday morning and was breathlessly seized by someone from the Marketing department asking for all sorts of new reports. It turns out that on the previous Friday afternoon the Marketing department hijacked the dev team and completely rebuilt the company website, complete with added javascript buttons, pop-up modals, accordions, and brand new sections of content. The only two departments that were aware of any changes going on were Marketing and Development. They worked until the late hours of Friday night/Saturday morning, and wanted to see all the data collected on all the new sections and new fancy buttons.

The problem was, no one though of what events and variable tags needed to be added to actually track any of the new tools. And in the new sections sections added to the company website, tracking code was completely omitted from the pages. There was nothing to report. “How can there be nothing to report? We’re paying for the Ferrari of Analytics.”

With all of these new additions, no one even thought about tracking anything or what needed to be configured. No tag manager would have prevented this from happening. It still would have been Monday before anyone would have thought about how these changes could be tracked. Yes, we should be happy that we can make easy changes with analytics, but Analytics cannot be an island unto itself. Analytics is foundation of everything we do. Everyone needs to have a vested interest in it.

Analytics cannot be out of site, out of mind. Data Collection should be considered a part of regular website maintenance.