What is Google Analytics Benchmarks?

Question

Can anybody explain the Google Analytics Benchmarks(beta)

Answer 1

Google announced a new feature for its web analytics product this week that illustrates well the potential in anonymous aggregate data analysis. This siloed product announcement points to an even more exciting future if data portability dreams come true.

Google Analytics Industry Benchmarking will let users opt-in to share and have access to aggregate traffic info for websites in their industry vertical and at other points in their supply chain. (See sample screenshot below.)

The idea is to allow companies to compare their website performance over time and to put their experiences in context with the experiences of other related businesses. If an action you took seemed to have caused a big traffic spike, it would be good to confirm that it was not just an industry-wide traffic increase that actually occurred. Likewise, if traffic growth for your business has a particularly strong correlation with growth in a related businesses sector, then some biz dev time might be warranted there.

Online invoicing service FreshBooks has been doing the same kind of thing for individual contractors for some time ("other consultants in your field are getting their invoices paid on average 2 weeks faster than you are"). Personal finance service Mint compares your spending habits to those of other users, NetWorthIQ uses aggregate financial data for wealth benchmarks and Yahoo!'s MyBlogLog displays aggregate traffic trends for users with similar web browsing interests.

These kinds of data driven value add are enabled in most cases by the network effect of a successful app but also by the world of web services. If recommendation engines are often the result of aggregate information analyzed and pointed at an individual, then industry benchmarks may be the flipside - aggregate information aimed at organizations.

Answer 2

Hello,

Google Analytics added a new feature that lets you compare your site's traffic with average data for other similar sites. To make this feature possible, you need to enable data sharing with the benchmarking service. "Google will remove all identifiable information about your website, then combine that data with hundreds of other anonymous sites in comparable industries and report them in an aggregate form." There's also an option to enable data sharing with other Google services that will allow a better integration between Analytics, AdWords and other services.

The benchmarking data is now live and you can see it if you go to Visitors > Benchmarking (Beta). Google compares the following values for the last 30 days: visits, page views, pages/visit, bounce rate, average time on site and new visits. By default, your site is compared with other sites of similar size, but you can restrict the benchmark to general categories like: Internet, Travel, Shopping, Reference etc. Since the data is aggregated from the sites that agreed to participate in the program, it may not be representative. Google says it will add new categories once more sites will enable the data sharing option.

"When benchmarking is enabled, Google crawls the websites in the account then categorizes them by vertical and the amount of visits. The data is then made anonymous through aggregation. For sites of a similar size, a category of industry verticals can be chosen when there is a sufficient number of accounts in that category."

If you need for more infomation on "Google Analytics Benchmarks" just go through this link : http://googlesystem.blogspot.com/2008/03...

Good Luck...

with regards,

raom.

Answer 3

It's a new feature that allows you to compare your site's stats with average stats of similar sites

But you first need to enable data sharing features http://www.google.com/support/analytics/...

Answer 4

It gives you the ability to keep track of major events in your website to look back and see if something you changed helped. Everytime you make a big revision or start a specific ad campaign make a benchmark and you will know exactly why you gained a lot of traffic.