Google Analytics Data Sharing - Yes or No?

[Lagonda]

This morning I got this welcome when accessing my Analytics account.

[img107.imageshack.us...]

What do you think? When selecting more options I got:

[img152.imageshack.us...]

Is this new? I don't remember reading about this anywhere...

a beta version of industry benchmarking and a data-sharing settings page.

Industry benchmarking is a commonly requested new service that enables customers to see how their site data compares to sites in any available industry vertical. We believe this data will provide actionable insights by providing context for users to understand how their site is doing. For example, if you have a travel website and you get a spike in traffic on Mondays, you may want to know whether other travel sites get that same spike on Mondays.

You can also compare your site against an industry vertical different than your own.

[analytics.blogspot.com...]

[edited by: engine at 6:29 pm (utc) on Mar. 6, 2008]
[edit reason] added quote [/edit]

[solidcore]

WOW now analytics will be working with adsense ( that is one way to prove your traffic is real )

[venti]

This could be pretty neat. I am waiting for the industry benchmarking information to become available to me. Does anyone know how this will be incorporated?

[deepakmmt]

i guess it can have adverse effect on adsense revenue as well. What do you think?

[benevolent001]

Have you Accepted this option? Am still reading what actually they want and will share.

[AussieWebmaster]

It is a ploy to get people to wave their privacy of their data - hey it gets lumped into aggregate but AOL knows there seems to be ways of separating it out....

also what about those areas that others have not gotten to yet... is there an option only to release a little of the data and restrict others... so when your competitors give up their secrets they are not getting yours?

[sem4u]

Looks like they are trying to roll out a Hitwise style set of data...if you give your stats details to Google...

[indigojo]

Can anyone see anything related to adsense in analytics or adsense - looked everywhere?

[sudden]

To be honest, I thought the anonymous data sharing was taking place from day one (or would have been possible at least, looking at the TOS)?

[aleksl]

I said "No" for now, we'll see how this plays out.

I don't trust G$$gle with my data anymore, knowing what they do with it...

[naeem]

sorry, but how does it work? what we have to do to share data?

[reprint]

i got two choices. one for sharing for google products and the other for anonymous sharing across google and benchmarking with promise of info for verticals etc. i chose the second.
the first may help adwords users though

[zangatling]

Somehow I don't think enough people are going to opt-in to make it of any use.

[BradleyT]

We opted in about the time I saw this post and are finally getting some data showing.

We're a small private EDU and according to this we're miles ahead of all sites in Education and Vocational & Continuing Education. I'm taking that with a grain of salt...

Note - when it first loads you're in the category (ALL) so you have to drill down to find the proper category. The help files says there are at least 100 sites in each category. For us it looks like benchmark comparison data started on the 3rd week in March - it's all flatlined before then.

Maybe it's just my browser settings but the bubble that shows the two comparisons of a data point (specific date) floats under the heading section making it unviewable.

[BradleyT]

As for how it looks - it's just like a 6 panel dashboard and the charts look similar to when you do a date comparison of your site (blue line (you) vs. grey line (benchmark))

It shows line graphs for -

Visits
Bounce Rate
Pageviews
Avg. Time On Site
Pages/Visit
New Visits

[edited by: BradleyT at 4:34 am (utc) on April 8, 2008]

[Januuski]

Can anyone post a complete list of categories available through the benchmarking?

[netchicken1]

I have been waiting for a week or two and still don't see any comparisons.

[travelin cat]

I signed up when I first heard about this and I still have no data. Maybe no one in my sector wants to contribute...

[p5gal5]

I enabled it, let it percolate for a couple weeks, and then disabled it again.

According to the stats, we were head-and-shoulders above every other site in our vertical, overall, industry - everything, and on every indicator. <pats self on back>

We're good, but not THAT good. A couple thousand uniques/day and you're playing with ALL the big boys? I don't think this data is very well-rounded at all.

[BradleyT]

Can anyone post a complete list of categories available through the benchmarking?

There are about 30 high level categories and each of those then expand into sub-categories and some of those go into sub-sub-categories; resulting in hundreds of categories.

Some example high level categories -
Business
Computers & Electronics
Shopping
Health
Travel

Sample sub categories -

Entertainment -> Music -> Lyrics & Tabs

Computers & Electronics -> Software -> Operating
Systems -> Linux & Unix

Computers & Electronics -> Software -> Operating Systems -> Windows

[Januuski]

There are about 30 high level categories and each of those then expand into sub-categories and some of those go into sub-sub-categories; resulting in hundreds of categories.

Some example high level categories -
Business
Computers & Electronics
Shopping
Health
Travel

Sample sub categories -

Entertainment -> Music -> Lyrics & Tabs

Computers & Electronics -> Software -> Operating
Systems -> Linux & Unix

Computers & Electronics -> Software -> Operating Systems -> Windows

Thank you!
I wish they will allow the sharing on per site basis.
I would try it for one but dont feel confident enough about sharing all data.

[skibum]

This will bea great sales tool. Show all the companies that are "below average" that they are below average. You need to up your CPCs cause the industry average is above yours, the industry average budget is above yours, the industry average amount of trafic is above yours so you need to buy more. Then when those advertisers are above average, time to move on to the next below average tier.

The big corps always love that competitive info and sometimes feel inadequate when they are below the industry average even if it makes business sense to be there.