Announcing Enhanced Link Attribution for In-Page Analytics

In-Page Analytics provides click-through data in the context of your actual site, and is a highly effective tool to analyze your site pages and come up with actionable information that can be used to optimize your site content.

Before now, In-Page Analytics was limited to showing clickthrough information by URL and not by the actual link on the page, and was limited to showing information only on links, and not on other elements like buttons. The most common complaint about In-Page Analytics is that if a page has two or more links to the same destination page, we show the same statistics for both links, since there was no telling which link the user actually clicked.

We are now introducing a new feature that solves these issues. To use Enhanced Link Attribution, you’ll need to add two lines to your tracking snippet and enable the feature in the web property settings. In-Page Analytics will then use a combination of element IDs and destination URL to provide the following new capabilities:

• Distinguish between multiple links to the same destination page, attributing the right number of clicks to each link.
• Provide click-through information even when redirects are being used.
• Provide click-through information for other elements such as buttons or navigations that were triggered by JavaScript code.

Here’s an example of how Enhanced Link Attribution can improve In-Page Analytics:

Before (without Enhanced Link Attribution):

After (With enhanced link attribution):

Notice the following differences:

• There’s a very prominent red ‘Add Subtitles’ link (that’s styled to look like a button) that didn’t show any click information before Enhanced Link Attribution, but now shows 20%. This is because clicking this link results in a server redirect to one of multiple pages, none of which is the URL specified in the link itself.
• Clicks on the link “Aquarium of Genoa (Italy)” were reported as 5.1%, but this is actually shared with clicks on the thumbnail to the left of that link. With Enhanced Link Attribution the thumbnail shows 2.3% and the text link 2.8%.
• With Enhanced Link Attribution clicks on the search button got 10%. This button results in a form submission to multiple URLs (that include the search string). We also see 0.1% clicks on the language filter, which actually causes some JavaScript code to run.

To find out more about Enhanced Link Attribution, and how to use it on your site, please read ourhelp center article.

We are rolling out this feature gradually over the next few weeks so please be patient if you don’t have the option to enable it in the web property settings. In any case, you can tag your pages now and start collecting Enhanced Link Attribution data today.

Return on investment analysis for all your digital channels

Google Analytics has been a great place to analyze the performance of your Google advertising programs, but a piece of the puzzle has been missing: analyzing return on investment across all your digital channels. That’s why we’re happy to announce our new Cost Data Import tool, now available in public beta. This tool allows Google Analytics users to import their cost data from any digital source -- such as paid search providers, display providers, affiliates, email, social and even organic traffic.

Your imported cost data can be viewed in two places: in a new report called Cost Analysis in Traffic Sources, and in the newly publicly available Attribution Modeling Tool. These reports show you how all your digital marketing channels are performing compared to each other, so you can make better decisions about your marketing programs.

To take advantage of cost analysis, you can upload data in two ways: via a self-service API, or using solutions created by independent application providers. These solution providers include:

• NEXT Analytics 
• AutomateAnalytics.com GA Data Uploader 
• ShufflePoint In2GA
• Analytics Canvas 

Our early customers are already loving it! Here are some success stories:

“Most of our paid search and social advertising decisions were made strictly based on a conversion pixel and CPA. We really didn't have the resources or the energy to continue to pull data and work it backward for detailed analysis. Now that we can import raw data into Google Analytics using NEXT Analytics v5, we can quickly and easily look for insights - just as we do with Adwords."
-- Darcy Foster, President, Natural Wellbeing (with Cardinal Path) 

“Before, we used to manually match paid search cost to revenue data in Excel. WithAutomateAnalytics.com GA Data Uploader, we have been able to automate this process, and can now much more accurately measure paid search campaign ROI within Google Analytics."
-- David Jaeger, Director of SEM, National Positions 

“Using the ‘In2GA’ cost data import tool from ShufllePoint, our partners at E-Nor can improve the performance of our paid search channel more efficiently.This translates into quicker insights comparing campaign metrics, ad effectiveness, and keyword performance at one glance instead of logging into multiple systems. Any application or feature that streamlines data collection for analysis, ultimately impacting the bottom line positively, is welcomed. Thanks for the continued innovations and look forward to more.”
-- Michael Rosito, Founder & President OEMPCWorld.com

Cost Data Import will be rolling out over the next month. If your account has been enabled, you should be able to see the Cost Analysis report show up in the Traffic Sources menu on the left-hand side of the Google Analytics interface (in the Standard Reporting tab). We hope this tool will provide a clearer view of your media performance across all your channels and help you make more informed budgeting decisions.