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An update has been released last month by Google Analytics, declaring to add some additional selected features based on its latest feedback (recent upgrade back on May 8, 2007) about its service. Summation of these changes are discussed below-

1. Hourly Reporting: The former Google Analytics interface had the facility of hourly reporting. But the feature was not available in the products May 8th. But realizing user’s disappointment and problems, Google decided to reintroduce it and now Google Analytics will offer hourly reporting again.

2. Clickable URLs: You can now click on URLs in different Sites, Top Exit Pages, Top Content, and Top Landing Pages reports and get quick access to them. This change will definitely help the referrers to browse through sites.

3. Cross Segmentation by Network Location: Using the option of network location, Google Analytics now can support cross segmenting reports.

4. Increased number of data rows per page: Now you have the opportunity to list your desired data up to 500 rows provided that the data refer to those sites or search key phrases. Previously the maximum was 100. This new service will obviously help you to look over the data easily than before.

5. Bounce Rate color change: Formerly, Google Analysis used the color RED to point out the decreasing bounce rate whereas GREEN used to point out the increasing bounce rate. Google flipped it as it meant the reverse.

6. AdWords Integration: Google now enables you to easily integrate AdWords into your account in Google Analytics. This could also be done before, but the process was a bit clumsy compared with the new one.

Here are links from a number of Web analytics experts and other bloggers that I added to my Google Analytics Upgrade post from last week.

What Web Analytics Experts Are Saying:

New Google Analytics Visualizations — Clinton Ivy is a WAA board member and a consultant at WebSideStory just unifed with Visual Sciences. His post offers comments and recommendations on the new visualizations in V2.

Google Analytics V2 - Jeffrey Veen Podcast — Craig Danuloff founder of Commerce360 has podcasted (12:18) his post-V2 intervew with Jeffrey Veen. The interview covers design and usability goals, presentation of related data in report screens, new segmentation abilities, report distribution features and new date selection and data-range features.

E-metrics San Francisco 2007: Busy, busy, busy — Ian Thomas marketing director at Web Abacus makes a short comment what most impressed him was “that Google had the discipline to fix what was broken about GA - its interface…”

What Others Experts Are Saying:
27 Features That Make Google Analytics Best of Breed — Adam Ostrow from Mashable has a post for Web analytics newbies on 27 different features that V2 GA offers.

First Look - Google Analytics Launches New Interface and Reporting — Andy Beal from Marketing Pilgrim discusses the new interface and the new features.

Tuesday at EMetrics Brett Crosby and Jeff Veen announced Version 2 of Google Analytics (GA). There is a post both on the Official Google Blog and on the Google Analytics Blog.

The list below has some of the main improvements in Version 2 of Google analytics as reported by Google and the Web analytics experts.

Main Improvements of Version 2 GA:

1. Scheduled email of reports or dashboards
2. Customizable dashboard
3. Site overlay enhancements
4. Improved visitor segmentation
5. Geo-targeting enhancements
6. PDF extracts
7. Trend and over-time graphics
8. Contextual help tips

What Web Analytics Experts Are Saying:

New Training Material for New Version of GA — Andrew Miles from GA Experts feels like users of the new V2 product will “soon realise how effective the enhancements will be to both users and businesses.” He posts on some of the features they found useful during their two months of beta testing the product on their Websites.

Google Analytics Is Re-Launched: Do These Five Things First In V2 — Avinash Kaushik an analytics evangelist for Google says V2 is “radically different and provides such a compelling value proposition to users of web analytics”. His blog post discusses new data interaction model, the enhanced data discoverability, features that help you get relevant context, improved segmentation, and number of other “upgraded goodies”.

New: New Google Analytics Visualizations — Clinton Ivy is a WAA board member and a consultant at WebSideStory just unifed with Visual Sciences. His post offers comments and recommendations on the new visualizations in V2.

New: Google Analytics V2 - Jeffrey Veen Podcast — Craig Danuloff founder of Commerce360 has podcasted (12:18) his post-V2 intervew with Jeffrey Veen. The interview covers design and usability goals, presentation of related data in report screens, new segmentation abilities, report distribution features and new date selection and data-range features.

All the news that is fit to Blog — Gary Angel the President of Semphonic take a poke at GA in his post on what is big news out of eMetrics. His low opinion of GA before the update is “I really wouldn’t have recommended GA to any company that actually wanted web analytics.” Perhaps after he gets “a chance to work with it a bit I’ll have a better opinion,” and hopefully he will blog that.

New: E-metrics San Francisco 2007: Busy, busy, busy — Ian Thomas marketing director at Web Abacus makes a short comment what most impressed him was “that Google had the discipline to fix what was broken about GA - its interface…”

New Version of Google Analytics! — Jeff Gills from the Google Analytics Team comments on V2 that “the new version presents data more clearly and in context, so you can look at a single report to gain insights rather than having to pull up several reports to understand what action to take.” In his post at the Official Google Analytics blog there are links to the product tour, report finder tool, a FAQ and the new version of the features tour page.

Who’s laughing at Google Analytics now? — Julien Coquet from OX2 claims that with the new V2 of Google analytics “the bar been kicked several steps higher…” He has put up two posts on V2 and has promising to post more details soon.

Welcome to the New Google Analytics — Justin Cutroni a GA authorized consultant at EpikOne notes that V2 is so “radically different than the old reporting interface” that “You may even be lost the first time you log in”. Justin has put up six shorter posts that deal with the new reporting interface, the new data range selector, custom dashboards, email reports, sticky URLs and PDF report export.

New Google Analytics Plus Insight from Brett Crosby — Manoj Jasra director of technology at Enquiro Search Solutions has posted his post-V2 interview with Brett Crosby the senior manger of Google analytics (audio 7:44).

Google Analytics: Extreme Makeover Edition — Michael Harrison a GA support tech over at ROI Revolution assures us that “this redesign is a very good thing. We’ve been using the new interface for over two months now, and it’s made day-to-day analysis a breeze.” Michael also also posted View Entire Referring URL in Google Analytics on V2.

Update to Google Analytics — Pat McCarthy director of business development at Right Media notes in his blog post that he had been “wondering for a while what the status of MeasureMap was with Google, and if Veen and team were working on it or Google Analytics.” He feels that the MeasureMap team had a hand in the redesign.

New Google Analytics Interface and New t-shirts — Robbin Steif from LunaMetrics feels that the ability to “now segment by landing page” is “much more important to me than any other enhancement.” Her comment “GA is still free, with the new interface” got me wondering if Google would ever start charging for this product.

What Others Experts Are Saying:

New: 27 Features That Make Google Analytics Best of Breed — Adam Ostrow from Mashable has a post for Web analytics newbies on 27 different features that V2 GA offers.

New: First Look - Google Analytics Launches New Interface and Reporting — Andy Beal from Marketing Pilgrim discusses the new interface and the new features.

Webmasters will soon be able to have Google manage and market their Website and blog widget space. Advertisers will produce a Google Gadget in standard IAB Unit Sizes for distribution across the Google network at CPC or CPM billing rates.

Google will boost its current Google Analytics package to sustain better tracking for paid and free widget campaigns in this sub-page and asynchronous pageload environment. The Google Gadget advertising beta program was made public during a marketing seminar for the automotive industry according to Online Media Daily.

By the end of this year Google will offer all webmasters its conventional text link advertising, display advertising, and interactive gadgets to its huge network of advertisers. Google AdSense publishers can select the interactive marketing unit that best suits their need, and the Google bidding system can select the most profitable ad content.

The advertising content can behave like a small application, integrating tabs, updating its content on-the-fly using web feeds and other data protocols, and creating small interactive experiences across the web.
Google Gadget ads will benefit from the same contextual analysis, click-through rate, and other measures of interactivity and success already measured by the Google system.

The whole concept is pretty nice, and it will be fascinating to see what type of CPM might be commanded from a 300 x 250 pixel widget as an advertising machine. The new advertising system should be a huge boost to widget-producing design studios as big brands will be much more aware of this potential advertising spend.

Google is not the only business thinking about widgets as a paid advertising model. Startups such as Widgetbox and Clearspring feature widget analytics, directories, and plans for future advertising revenue.