Coming Soon: Google Analytics Intelligence

Last week, a few of us here at Digital Third Coast attended the first-ever Stratigent Google Analytics User Conference at the Field Museum in Chicago. The conference brought together a variety of users of GA and gave us all an opportunity to interact with many of Google’s top Analytics engineers. During the days’ presentations and discussions, one exciting (and soon-to-be-released) feature kept coming up: Google Analytics Intelligence.

On a basic level, GA Intelligence will provide alerts whenever there is an unusual spike in activity from virtually any user location, page section, referrer, and so on. The feature will have customizable settings for sensitivity, meaning that users will have the option to determine with precision just what level of activity will trigger an alert.

For example, if a site suddenly receives twice its usual amount of visitors from North Carolina, Analytics will let us know in near-real time. More often than not, this kind of spike is not a coincidence — there is probably a site catering to a tarheel audience that is pushing that traffic to our client. Other common metrics, such as bounce rate or conversion rate will additionally be covered by the Intelligence system.

The benefits of this feature are both obvious and exciting. Intelligence alerts will help users deal with the ambiguity of traffic spikes–telling us not only when, but why our clients’ websites are enjoying increased traffic. Armed with these data, we will be able to more effectively monitor our strategic initiatives, knowing exactly what works as soon as it’s working. Here’s what the alerts will look like in the Analytics dashboard (which is, of course, only one form that the alerts will take):

Like almost everything from Google, perhaps the best thing about Analytics Intelligence is actually something it’s missing: a price tag. Our friends in Mountain View will be releasing Intelligence as a free feature within its already-free Analytics package. For us and other SEO professionals, this is a major draw beyond self-interest: because we’re not paying for the service, we’ll be able to devote all of our resources to catering to our clients and leveraging our expertise.