Among the many collections that Google has had on its plate over the past two years, and now — The good news for some enthusiastic Bloggers, Google has quietly moved up the analytics game with their latest feature set in the analytics tool: “Google Analytics for Blogger” has officially entered private beta.
And the discouraging news for Measure Map bloggers: existing analytics data from the original Measure Map cannot be transferred into the Google Analytics / Measure Map platform.
Back in February 2006 Google purchased the Adaptive Path’s innovative set of blog traffic measurement tools called MeasureMap. Since then Jeffrey Veen and his team have redesigned Google Analytics and integrated new features such as Website Optimizer with great success.
“Its key feature was providing blog proprietors with a near-real-time geographical plot of where its readers originated from, along with key data as to what readers were interested in and what they responded to.”
The private beta stage, as its name designates, something that companies often comment on, and on the Official Google Analytics Blog, Group Manager Brett Crosby acknowledged, “We usually do not widely announce private-beta programs.”
But he then continued, “We are moving all existing Measure Map users (including many prominent bloggers) to this new interface. With all the exhilaration around it, we knew we could not keep it a secret, so we decided to let the cat out of the bag early.”
Jeff Veen made the announcement of the latest Google Analytics for Bloggers reporting interface several weeks ago at South by Southwest and had this to say: “the team has been hard at work fulfilling our original promise: to help bloggers understand the impact that their blogs are having on the world. To that end, we have rebuilt Measure Map as an integrated feature of both Google Analytics and Blogger. We hope you like what you see.”
“We are offering our earliest users of Measure Map a chance to use our latest service, built on the powerful Google Analytics platform and continuing to use the interface you are familiar with,” reads an excerpt of the e-mail posted by one blogger whose principal subjects include, among other things, blogging itself.
At present, Google Analytics is a complimentary tool best suited to commercial sites whose goals include driving readers to specific pages, and often converting those readers into customers. Bloggers have other goals in mind; they are intrigued by more personal data about readers’ statistics and their interests.
“I bet I check my stats a half-dozen times a day, anxious to see if anyone has linked to me or see what posts are most popular today,” wrote Google’s Veen, whom the company assigned to the MeasureMap team since February 2006. “Our users agree — whether their audience is just friends and family or thousands of readers — they are having more and more fun with their blogs and investing more time in them. And that means content across the web is getting better.”
Google plans to work out all the frizzles and issues using the beta over the next year before they release it to the general public. When it finally is released it will be an optional reporting tool in both Blogger and Google Analytics.
An email invitation sent out to all former Measure Map users telling them their accounts would be transferred to the new application — sans historical data -– and they were invited to test the new software.
Though each one plays the waiting game, we will be sure to report any indications of how Analytics for Blogger is performing. Crosby warned that there could be some hiccups, yet the fact that there was a big announcement hopefully indicates it’s in somewhat solid shape.