Mountain View, California — After being available as a beta release for more than a year, in a largely expected move, search engine giant Google has announced the closure of its original analytics platform in favor of its updated service in real-time, reports confirm.
More than a year since releasing its new version of Google Analytics, the company decided that it is now time to stop offering the legacy version, and the latest version of Analytics now officially replaces the old version that has been both loved and cursed at by business users since its debut.
“After a year of maintaining both the old and new versions of Analytics, we are now fully transitioning and leaving the old version behind,” Paul Muret, director of engineering for Google Analytics, wrote in a July 17 blog post.
The web giant’s most powerful and popular application Google Analytics, that helps track traffic trends for websites, calculating detailed statistics on how users arrive there, be it through search engines, links, PDFs or referrals.
Google originally unleashed a new version of the Web visitor statistic service last September that focused on real-time results but kept a link to the old version at the bottom of the page. The company mentioned in a blog post that as of tomorrow, it will be removing links to the previous version.
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Google Analytics (Credit: Google) Click to enlarge…
In addition, the new version boasts a number of novel features that Google hopes will ease the pain of those who have been clinging to the legacy analytics platform; features like real-time analytics; social-media reports to help with marketing initiatives; mobile reports that keep track of mobile visitors; and content experiments, which allow companies to show different versions of their pages to different users.
“We have received some really great responses over the last year on what is working and what is not; we have been listening very closely and doing our best to incorporate the feedback and ideas,” Muret, said in a company blog post. “We are continually working to improve upon Google Analytics and help provide you with tools to make better decisions for your website and marketing programs, so please keep providing the feedback.”
Overall, the feature packed version of Analytics, which is used by Website owners to track the success of their online advertising campaigns, analyze their Web traffic and evaluate what is and is not working to lure eyeballs, includes a host of new features.
Among the most noteworthy feature of the revamped analytics platform is that data can now be analyzed on campaigns, AdWords or on live events in real-time, allowing for more reactive and responsive monitoring.
Besides, the new Analytics also incorporates with social media, giving you a detail of how this channel has affected your company, the worth of socially-led traffic and whether it drives conversions. Another valuable addition is that you can now map a visitor’s entire journey to your site, rather than seeing the last click that brought them to their destination. This opens up many more potential touch points in the funnel.
Moreover, this new version also includes a Mobile Reports, that is now coherently logged through Analytics. App Analytics was released last month and provides information on conversions, downloads, when and how mobile users interact with AdWords via their handset.
As a matter of fact, these reports can help site owners see how visitors from mobile devices and AdWords mobile campaigns engage with their Websites, with details on the number of pages visited, time spent on the site and more.
Finally, for users who have not yet made the transition should do so instantly, as Google notes that to measure the effectiveness of social media, and content experiments that allow Web editors to show different versions of same page to users and measure their effectiveness.
Apparently, Google Analytics is a free service and allows account holders to add up to 50 websites to one users. It holds the majority market share at 82% and is used by approximately 52% of the top 10,000 businesses, reports the technology site, Value Walk.
Lastly, the company is further asking that Analytics users continue to report on what is good and bad about the product.