Google Upgrades Analytics

Wow, my first impression is pretty good. Google Analytics no longer just looks like an orange version of Urchin software (the company they bought back in 2005). The dashboards are nicer, the navigation and overall data accessibility seem easier to use. I was skeptical of what kind of upgrades we were going to see once Google bought Urchin and made the product free to everyone. Website analyst pros and mom and pop website owners are both going to love the new functionality. My favorites are the consolidation of the CPC and organic reports (which can then be broken up and drilled down) and the easy ability to cross segment the reports by various factors (keyword, campaign, geo, etc).

Here are some of the improvements (with my comments):

• Email and export reports: Schedule or send ad-hoc personalized report emails and export reports in PDF format (Finally, calling them behind the times for this is kind).
• Custom Dashboard: No more digging through reports. Put all the information you need on a custom dashboard that you can email to others (This is nice because you can set up high level reports for senior management and detailed breakdown for the analysts and access the information much quicker than the past).
• Trend and Over-time Graph: Compare time periods and select date ranges without losing sight of long term trends (I thought you could already do this, but even so the functionality and presentation is way better).
• Contextual help tips: Context sensitive Help and Conversion University tips are available from every report (Great for beginner analysts who don’t know what they are looking at and were frustrated with the help section in the past).