API makes is possible to build reports outside Google Analytics. With programming languages, such as PHP, Java and JavaScript, you are able to create different applications for Google Analytics. Mobile GA is an application for using Google Analytics with your mobile phone. Axiom CMS imports Google Analytics data directly to CMS so that content editors are able to use the data in order to make better content for websites.

The easiest way of using API is probably to use Excel integration made by a Finnish guy called Mikael Thuneberg. If you have Vista or XP and Microsoft Office, just download the Excel from Mikael’s site and try it.

1. Download the file GA data fetch.xls
2. Open the file and ensure, that you have macros turned on
3. Fill in the userid (email), password and profile number (you’ll find this in URL, when you are looking at your reports in GA interface id=xxx))
4. Try to change the dimensions and metrics! That’s it! Have fun!

The evening started with my presentation, Benefits of combining online and offline tracking. Geoff Galat from Tealeaf continued the event by explaining how important the customer experience is in online environment. Kalle Heinonen from Omniture (Adobe) made an interesting speech and motivated the audience to send SMS to a specific number in order to receive the full presentation as a PDF file – true cross channel measuring in practice .

Aurélie Pols summarized typical problems that organizations meet when the measuring of different channels hasn’t been planned properly before hand. Petri Mertanen, from Naviatech, presented a case study of Sea Life’s marketing strategy with cross channels. The presentation included good practical tips. Kwantic & Frantic ended up the event with the presentation of Livestrong – Lance Armstrong, which highlighted how the Livestrong campaign could be measured, if it would be measured in an online environment.

The abstract of Estime’s presentation is available at www.analytics.fi. Some videos have been uploaded to youtube by Petri Mertanen.

Even though Flash sites are quite challenging for SEO and AdWords perspective, Flash sites stil come into existence. Nowadays robots are able to read embedded texts inside Flash files and they are even able to find the texts, that aren’t readable through swf file. Still search engine optimization for Flash sites get tricky.

When using AdWords, Flash sites are causing problems for targeting. Ads are usually targeted for different pages and Flash itself is only one page. Therefore differents ads cannot be directed to different views of Flash site without extra tuning. The main reason for this is the quality score, which is greatly based on the relevancy of the keywords and the content of the landing page. If the keywords don’t match to the content of the landing page, quality scores stay low and consistently good ranking stays expensive.

Flash and Google Analytics
Google Analytics enables tracking of Flash sites. There are several options, depending on the situation, because Analytics is able to track any browserbased activity, such as JavaScript event or Flash event.

There are two common ways: trackPageView function and Adobe Flash. TrackPageView fits for sites, that are implemented with HTML and include a call to Flash file. Adobe Flash fits for any kind of Flash site, such as:
- HTML site with embedded Flash widget
- Flash- or Flex- file, which is distributed around the web (a game for example)
- Flash only friven site which is hosted on an HTML page

It’s easy to implement tracking with Adobe Flash. Adobe itself has created the component and it includes all the functionalities that the original JavaScript version of the code has. Adobe Flash uses the version three of ActionScript, so upgrading is recommended, if you are using earlier version.

TrackPageView example
on (release) {
getURL(”javascript:pageTracker._trackPageview(’/download/brochure.html’);”);
_root.gotoAndPlay(3);
myVar = “Flash Test”;
}

Adobe Flash component example
playGame.addEventListener( MouseEvent.CLICK, onButtonClick );
function onButtonClick( event:Event ):void
{
tracker.trackPageview( “/thisIsMyGame”);
}

Sometimes web analytics can solve problems on the site. You will find your own domain from referring sites or AdWords data is visible in wrong profile. Sometimes there are bigger problems in the background.

The picture above describes the non paid keywords in Google Analytics. Keywords associated with brand are filtered out. The question is: What extremely relevant file has been misconfigured until the March 15th?