New Google Analytics Comparison Feature
Huh, I just was perusing the ol’ Google Analytics when I noticed a new line in the date range selection box. It said “Comparing to: Site (?)”.
“What’s that?” I think to myself. Well, looks like Google has quietly rolled out a new beta feature that’s really nice! You have a choice of comparing to site and comparing to date range. Comparing to site doesn’t seem all that interesting - I think it means behave like Analytics always behaved. Comparing to date range, on the other hand kicks ass.
Now GA allows you to select two date ranges and it will show those date ranges overlayed in any given graph. So, you can see how you did this month relative to last month, for example. This works across all the various graphs they provide you - even the hourly visitor charts! That’s pretty sweet. Also, in aggregate numbers like visits and pageviews it drops a little number underneath your current range to show how you did before and the percent change. This is really useful for easily finding month to month changes as well as year over year. Even the little sparklines sprinkled throughout the site will show you the both lines for your chosen date ranges.
Still, I wish that google gave more aggregate numbers - I’d love to be able to chart weekly and/or monthly numbers for all these different reports. Daily is nice, but it’s hard to really get a sense of the bigger picture with so much granularity, y’know?
Another new fanciness with the graphing is that in addition to overlaying a different date range on a single chart you can also select two different reports to overlay. The interface for this is easy - clicking on the tab over the upper right hand corner of every chart you get an option of choosing a graph mode. This isn’t really well implemented on most charts - confusingly when you select “Compare Two Metrics” on many of these charts you get two radio buttons and some text that says “visits.” It simply means, there’s no other options for you to chart - this poor bastard of a graph can only have one line on it. If you go to the main graph on your dashboard you get all sorts of options, visits, pageviews, pages/visit, etc… and so you can see how different numbers relate (or don’t relate) to each other.
All in all, this is quite a nice little feature set to roll out. I’m glad they’re still rolling out features on this bad boy. The last post on their blog was November 2, so hopefully they’ll post more details about this soon. You digging it? What’s your main missing feature from GA?
