Google Analytics Overlay Gets A Revamp – Introducing In-Page Analytics
Yep you heard it here first, the site overlay report on Google Analytics appears to be missing, instead it has been replaced by a very similar report called the “In-Page Analytics” report. Interestingly it still has the same problem as the old overlay report in that it can’t differentiate between the different locations of links going to the same URL. So for example you may have a home button at the top and the bottom of your page, but it would attribute them the same percentage of clicks.
Could This Be The End Of Crazy Egg?
It looks like the problem with not being able to differentiate between links is about to change – two things seem to be hinting at this. First up is that they now have a big horizontal bar telling you what percentage of clicks occured below the point you are currently looking at.
The second interesting change is that if you look at the report for a single page it has a button to In-Page Analytics saying “Click Patterns. In-Page Analytics (Beta). Click Data On Top Of Your Website” – this leads me to believe we are going to be seeing some huge changes to site overlay report on Google Analytics soon.
You can also filter by all kinds of metrics (I’m not sure if this is new or not – I never used the overlay because it sucked so much), so you can filter by keyword, by location, by browser, new or returning visitor – this opens up a whole World of useful functionality, if they solve the problem I referred to above.
The only major gripe I’ve got with it at the moment is that when I go onto the website in question I still seem to get the overlay, but you appear to be able to close it!
Anyways, watch this space, as we may all be getting free Crazy Egg like functionality soon (or better)!
9 Comments
@analisisweb - http://analisis-web.blogspot.com
hey! i wrote this mornig about this in my blog! http://goo.gl/fb/4dCZI
Nicolas Chevallier - http://www.nicolas-chevallier.fr/
GA is already an indispensable tool. With this feature they will still have an edge over the competition.
Phill Ohren - http://phill.co
Cheers Dave, great post.
GA has progressed massively since the simple Website Optimiser overlay. Still, I’m not convinced that the new overlay can handle things like 2 links to the same URL (for whatever reason). The old version would claim that both links would have the same CTR, when in some cases only links was clicked.
That aside, its been almost a years since GA treated us with new toys. (Nov 2009 was the release of Intelligence).
Vax SEO Reporting » Blog Archive » 5 Quick Google Analytics Hacks - pingback
[…] writing this post, one of Dave Naylor’s gang posted about a new interface for in-page analytics which replaces the old site overlay. I’m quite excited about this, I think it paves the way […]
Robbie Hodge - http://www.edreamz.com
Phil,
I made that mistake with the same URL. Check out my original blog post:
http://www.edreamz.com/blog/post.cfm/google-in-page-analytics-a-cro-dream
I thought the E-dreamz fish was reviving 16% of all clicks on the page. Little did I know it shared the same URL as the header logo.
This post clarifies the issue: http://www.edreamz.com/blog/post.cfm/our-fish-is-not-that-famous
Of course we could create tags or specific redirect urls to really track each click. Though often times I do not have access or the ability to edit a customers website. Had I not corrected my own error I could have really made some bad ORM decisions.
Christopher West - http://www.seobychristopherwest.com
Nice catch David.
Im in Analytics every single day, but dont often look at the Map Overlay section.
this looks good so far…
Roger Bert
Been waiting for this since your last post about crazyegg. Can’t wait till the full implementation is released.
5 Quick Google Analytics Hacks | SEOBLOG - pingback
[…] writing this post, one of Dave Naylor's gang posted about a new interface for in-page analytics which replaces the old site overlay. I'm quite excited about this, I think it paves the way for all […]
Nathan - http://www.njackson.co.uk
When I try vieiwing this report its broken! Theres no sidebar, the site isnt loading and it doesn’t work in any of my browsers…
Oh well :/