Over the past couple days I’ve been discovering a couple new additions and changes to Google Analytics which I wasn’t aware of which I’ll mention below;

Annotations

Perhaps the biggest update I’ve noticed; you can now annotate graphs in Google Analytics so you can note anything which may have happened at that time, such as website downtime which could have affected your stats – so in 6 months time when you go back to look at your stats, you can be reminded of why there is a blip the graph.

Simply click on a date on the graph, and a pop-up box appears where you can now Create a new annotation. Couldn’t  be simpler!

This could be very useful for people who often analyise old statistics, and what’s even better – you can make the annotations private, or if you are on a shared account (for example for work purposes), you can share the annotation with everyone else who has an account so all your collegues can also see the information.

Asynchronous Tracking

A new method of tracking stats on your site has also been released which optimises how your browser loads the Google ga.js file, minimising any negative impact on user experience and allowing you to have the tracking code higher on your webpage.

More info can be found over at Google about this one and how to implement it here

Mobile Visitors

Secondly, under ‘Visitors’, Google have now seperated out the stats of visitors who use mobile devices. Quite handy if you want to analyise mobile visitors on their own without other browsers affecting the results.

Network Location

Last but not least, a very minor tweak but deserves a mention – a couple weeks ago the ‘Network Location’ section (which I seem to alway use!) was renamed ‘Service Providers’ – nothing more than just a name change!