The Google Analytics Blog had a great blog post about how necessary it is to plan your tracking and metrics rather than just winging it.

The main points of the Analytics blog post are, when planning your approach to tracking data on your website, you should:

1. Determine what data you actually need
2. Find out if the data is available by default
3. Decide where you are going

I agree that it is important to know where you want to end up before you begin. Know the finish before you start, in other words. That said, these points are critical for making key decisions on collecting and analyzing data.

Be careful though that you don’t just start tracking data that you don’t need. Beginning webmasters like to ask for everything imaginable, but they may not really need all the information they are asking for. Be sure you ask for only what you need.

Most analytics packages offer a set of default tracking metrics. Those are default because it is assumed that most webmasters will be interested in that information. But some webmasters may want a little more detailed information. If that is the case then you’ll want to set up custom tracking for those particular metrics that you have an interest in.

Finally, by knowing the end before you begin, you can keep an honest and accurate record and historical information for that data that you are interested in.

Thanks for the Google Analytics Blog for an insightful post. Now happy tracking!

Google Analytics just got better, or did it?

Overall, I think the industry benchmarking statistics is a good idea. I welcome them. But there is something that eats at me about it and, no, it isn’t the privacy issue.

It is Google’s assertion that they won’t use your data unless you opt in. Well, that bothers me because it really isn’t industry statistics if it doesn’t include the entire industry. It is more like Alexa where the only people who are measured are users. That discounts the value of the information somewhat.

Let’s say that out of 100 Google AdWords customers within your industry only 20 of them opt in to the Google Analytics industry benchmarking. You’re one of them. Great! Now you get to see how you compare to 19 of your competitors. But you don’t know which 19. What if those 19 competitors are all below you in terms of market share? How would you know? There’d be no way to know, would there? And not only that, are you going to know that you are being compared to only 19 out of 99 competitors? Likely not.

That’s what bothers me.

Of course, I like the idea that competitors aren’t going to be able to see your personal business statistics. That’s the way it should be. But I do think that all users within your industry should be rolled into the statistics. Otherwise, the information is only half-good.

Google Analytics will help you with more accurate reporting. To get a more accurate account of your page views, click throughs, and conversion percentages you need to exclude your own IP address from the counts. When you visit your own website you will be logged as a visitor just like everyone else unless you filter your IP address from the equation. Not filtering your IP address will lead to watered down results.

For example, if you have 100 pay per click visits to your website and 20 of those result in sales conversions you will have a conversion rate of 20%. But if you visited your website 20 of those times then your conversion rate should in reality be 80/20, not 100/20, which is a 25% conversion rate. That’s why it is important to use the Google Analytics filter.

Log into your Google Analytics account. Below your website profiles you’ll see three links:

• Add Website Profile (on the left)
• Asset Manager (in the middle)
• Filter Manager (on the right)

Click on Filter Manager. Now click on “Add Filter” in the top right corner of the gray bar. Put a name in the Filter Name box then click on the drop down box below that field and select Exclude All Traffic From An IP Address. In the IP Address field you’ll see a sample IP address. That is a fictional sample, not a real address. You’ll have to replace the numbers will the numbers of your own IP address, but be careful not to edit out the back slashes or the dots. Next, select the websites that your filter will apply to. You can filter a range of IP addresses by including the range in the form of ([1-9]|1[0-9]|2[0-5])$ where your last set of numbers in the IP address appears. Here’s an example:

Just before Christmas, Microsoft adCenter Blog announced the introduction of its new Microsoft Web Analytics tool. It was just a beta release, but it looks like a great tool. In fact, I’d say it’s an essential tool if you use adCenter for your pay per click campaigns. You can hardly run a pay per click campaign without some form of analytics and while Google Analytics is great for Google AdWords, you really need to use an analytics tool that is designed specifically for the pay per click campaign that you are running. That’s why I recommend a Gatineau account for Microsoft adCenter users.

Initially, Microsoft had a $5 account sign up fee for new users. The plan was to dispense with that fee after the beginning of the new year. I haven’t seen anything that has changed that or that has said the fee is no longer required. Keep checking this blog for more updates and feel free to subscribe to the Microsoft acCenter Blog as well. If anything change or new developments occur regarding Microsoft acCenter or its Gatineau account then we’ll let you know.

Manoj Jasra made a post about the best blog posts of the year on analytics at WebProNews. He took 10 from an original list of 18 posted at Visual Revenue.

I found it a useful list, but was a bit put off that some of the posts on the list are from Manoj and Visual Revenue themselves. Although Manoj adds a few more from blogs that he likes. The list is useful, nonetheless. I highly recommend these three posts from that list:

• Answers To Your Top 10 Google Analytics Questions from Lunametrics
• 21 Reasons Why You Do NOT Need Google Analytics by Manoj Jasra
• Excellent Analytics Tip #10: How Thick Is Your Head And Long Is Your Tail? by Occam’s Razor

If you are doing any pay per click advertising then you need analytics. How else are you going to track your important stats? You need to concern yourself with your traffic counts, where your traffic is coming from, what pages are being viewed, how long visitors are staying on your site, what links they are clicking, which products are most popular, and whether or not your pay per click ads are converting traffic into sales. If you can’t measure these stats then you’ll have no idea how successful you are in your advertising.

Pay Per Click Journal would like to thank you for your continued readership. We will not be posting tomorrow or on New Year’s Day. But we would like to take a look back over the last three months of our life and highlight some of the more popular blog posts we’ve made since October.

Our first blog post was made on October 13. Since then, we’ve published 76 posts. These are 10 of our favorite:

• Who’s Going To Manage Your Pay Per Click?
• Google AdWords Vs. Microsoft AdCenter
• Microsoft AdCenter Upgrades And New Features
• Keyword Match Types: When Is Narrow Too Narrow?
• Yahoo! Search Marketing Quality Index
• Landing Page Optimization Is Of Supreme Importance
• PPC Bidding: How To Aim For Position No. 3
• Google Analytics Gets An Upgrade
• Landing Page Basics: Is Too Much Enough?
• Microsoft AdCenter Offers Free Pay Per Click Training

We hope you’ll check out these Pay Per Click Journal posts from the past three months. Meanwhile, if you have a favorite post about pay per click advertising, we’d like to know about it.

WebPosition 4 is offering a 30-day free trial.

Just in case you’re wondering what WebPosition 4 is, it’s the coolest web metrics tool on the planet. WebPosition 4 allows you to report search engine rankings, target your keywords, optimizes your web pages, submit your URLs to search engines, and analyze your conversions. Your 30-day free trial will allow you a chance to evaluate WebPosition 4 to determine if it will be helpful to your web business or not. My bet is that you’ll find it indispensable.

WebPosition 4 offers several great resources for websites in addition to its metrics software. The free newsletter is chock full of insights that will help you manage your website better. You’ll also get access to free educational resources. And you’ll also gain access to WordTracker for keyword research and a link analyzer.

There are few indispensable resources when it comes to effective PPC management, but I’d say Webposition 4 is one of them.

If all the search engines have built in web analytics then why do you need a program like Hitslink?

First, what Hitslink is: Hitslink is a web analytics software package that allows you to track the performance of your web pages, pay per click campaigns, and gives you a full overview of such things as traffic, conversions, link click throughs, etc. It does all the same things that you can get through Google Analytics, MSN AdCenter, and Yahoo Search Marketing. So why do you need it?

The answer is simple. I recommend Hitslink because it tracks them all. If you run pay per click campaigns at more than one search engine then you’ll need to add code from all of the search engines in order to track results from each campaign. But Hitslink will track them all and all you need to do is to add one set of code. This benefits you in several ways:

• Cuts down your code to text ratio (very important)
• Allows you to see which PPC campaigns are most effective - at a glance
• Tracks which landing pages are converting more
• You can see if certain ads are more effective in driving targeted traffic to the landing pages that are working for you
• See who’s visiting your site and how long they are staying there
• Get real time statistics

Hitslink is not some fly-by-night operation. They’ve been around since 1999 and I expect them to be around a lot longer. With 7,000 partners helping them grow (I being one of them), Hitslink has a bright future. If you want real analytics in real time, you can’t go wrong with Hitslink.

Advertise your Web site with Yahoo! Sponsored Search. Sign up and get a $25 credit into your new account. Learn more.