Google Analytics now has its new benchmarking feature live. You have to opt in to use the feature and I highly recommend it. This is one feature you don’t want to miss out on.
The usefulness is that you get to see where you stand against other sites within your niche for your important tracking metrics. The benchmarking feature is only as reliable as the number of sites within your niche that participate in the benchmarking, and since it’s anonymous reporting you don’t know who they are, but you can tell somewhat where you stand. Here’s why it is important:
The websites within your niche most likely to use benchmarking are also using Google AdWords. Since you have to have an AdWords account in order to open a Google Analytics account, you know that everyone tied in to the benchmarking feature at least has a Google AdWords account. Whether they use it or not is another story. But users of Google AdWords have an incentive for using benchmarking while those not using the service don’t have as much at stake. That makes it more likely that Google AdWords advertisers are using benchmarking. They’d want to know what their competitors are doing and how they stack up against them. You should too.
