Simplify your Google Analytics Reporting with Add-ons for Google Sheets

It's common for Google Analytics users to use spreadsheets to analyze their Google Analytics data or combine it with another data source. But exporting your data from Google Analytics to Google Sheets is a manual process, and it can be tedious if you run reports frequently or manage multiple accounts. With the release of Add-ons for Google Sheets, getting your Google Analytics data into Google Sheets has never been easier!

Add-ons allow you to extend the power of Google Sheets by automating common tasks and integrating with external services. The Google Analytics Spreadsheet Add-on allows you to access your Google Analytics data, right from within a spreadsheet!

The Google Analytics Spreadsheet Add-on

The Google Analytics Spreadsheet Add-on combines the power of the Google Analytics API with the rich feature set of Google Sheets, making it easier for Google Analytics users to access, visualize, share, and manage their data. With this add-on you can:

• Query and report data from multiple views.
• Compute and display custom calculations.
• Create visualizations and embed those visualizations on third-party websites.
• Schedule your reports to run and update automatically.
• Control who can see your data and visualizations by using Google Sheets' sharing and privacy features.

But perhaps the best way to find out what the Google Analytics Spreadsheet Add-on can do is to see it in action. In this short video I introduce the add-on, show you how to install it, and walk you through creating your first report.

If you want to go deeper, you can watch this more advanced video where I explain in detail the process of building a complete dashboard that automatically updates and can be embedded on a third-party website.

If you have more questions about how to use the add-on, check out the documentation. It explains each of its features and configuration options in much more detail.

Supermetrics and Analytics Canvas add-ons

The Google Analytics Spreadsheet Add-on gives users a powerful yet user-friendly way to access their Google Analytics data, but it doesn't solve all business integration needs.

For more advanced business and data-integration solutions, I strongly recommend trying out these two excellent Google Sheets add-ons created by our technology partners:

• Supermetrics for Google Docs and Sheets by Supermetrics
• Analytics Canvas Google Sheets Add-on by nModal Solutions Inc

Both of these add-ons integrate with Google Analytics as well as a variety of other platforms and services such as Facebook, Twitter, Microsoft Office, and many more. Free and premium versions are available. 

Feedback and Support

Add-ons are a great way to automate the process of getting your Google Analytics data into Google Sheets. We hope you take the time to try out these add-ons and see how they can improve your workflow.

If you use the Google Analytics Spreadsheet Add-on, we'd love to know what you think. You can leave a review in the Chrome Web Store, ask any questions you have in the add-on discussion group, or submit feedback directly from within Google Sheets.

Any and all feedback is welcome!

By: Philip Walton, Developer Programs Engineer, Google Analytics

Real-Time Widgets Now Available in Dashboards

The Dashboards feature in Google-Analytics is a great way to arrange a set of related custom widgets into a report you look at frequently (for example, see dashboards for a variety of use cases in our Solutions Gallery). Today we’re expanding dashboards’ functionality with four new real-time widgets that you can and plug into any dashboard (new or existing) of your choosing!

1) Setting up a real-time widget

If you have set up a dashboard widget before, then this will be very familiar to you. Create a new dashboard or click on the +Add Widget menu option of an existing dashboard.

Pick any of the four widgets available in the Real-time: section and customize the widget. Below I have created a widget that shows me active visitors from Canada but split up by Traffic-Type:

Here is how I set up this widget:

I chose the ‘Counter’ real-time widget and gave it a custom name (“Canada Active Visitors”), then set up a ‘Group by’ on ‘Traffic type’. This is how I see the split between referral and organic in the widget. Finally, I set up a filter to only show visitors from Canada.

2. Combining with other dashboard widgets

By creating and combining widgets, you can perform many types of analysis at a glance.

Using filters you can compare different segments of your real-time traffic. For example you can create two separate widgets that have different filters for the Country dimension (say Country==USA for one and Country==Canada for another) and you can compare real-time USA traffic versus India traffic, side by side.

You can go further and set up real-time and non real-time widgets on the same dashboard. 

Here is how one of my dashboards looks like (I use it to monitor and understand how traffic from Canada behaves after a blog post):

I have 5 widgets and widget #4 is a non real-time widget that gives me context on where I get visits from across the globe over the last month.

We hope you will enjoy creating new dashboards with these widgets and sparkling some real-time magic on existing dashboards!

Posted by the Google Analytics Real-Time team

Dashboards, Advanced Segments, And Custom Reports For Your Business Needs

We’ve heard you loud and clear that getting started on Google Analytics can be challenging. It’s such a robust tool with a variety of reports, filters, and customizations that for a new user it can be overwhelming to figure out where to look first for the data and insights that will enable you to make better decisions. For more advanced users it can be time consuming to build out different variations of reports and dashboards to get the clearest snapshot of your performance. That is why we’ve created the Google Analytics Solution Gallery.

The Google Analytics Solution Gallery hosts the top Dashboards, Advanced Segments and Custom Reports which you can quickly and easily import into your own account to see how your website is performing on key metrics. It helps you to filter through the noise to see the metrics that matter for your type of business: Ecommerce, Brand, Content Publishers. If you're not familiar with Dashboards, Advanced Segments and Custom Reports, check out these links to our help center for detailed descriptions on how they work and the insights they can help provide.

Solution examples
Here are a few examples of the solutions that you can download into your account to see how the analysis works with your data.

• Social sharing report - Content is king, but only if you know what it's up to. Learn what content from your website visitors are sharing and how they're sharing it. 

• Publisher dashboard - Bloggers can use this dashboard to see where readers come from and what they do on your site.

• Engaged traffic advanced segment - Measure traffic from high-value visitors who view at least three pages AND spend more than three minutes on your site. Why do these people love your site? Find out!

How do I add these to my account?
We’ve designed it so it’s easy to get started. Simply go to the Google Analytics Solution Gallery, pick from the drop drown menu the solutions that will be most helpful for your business. Select from Publisher, Ecommerce, Social, Mobile, Brand, etc.. . Hit “Download” for the solution you want to see in your account. If you are not already logged into Google Analytics we’ll ask you to sign in. Then you’ll be asked if you want to accept this solution into your account and what Web Profile do you want to apply it to. After you select that it will be in your account and your own data will populate the report.

We’re planning on expanding on this list of top solutions throughout the year so be sure to check back and see what we’ve added. A big thank you to Justin Cutroni & Avinash Kaushik for supplying many of the solutions currently available.

Posted by Ian Myszenski, Google Analytics team

Share your custom reports, advanced segments and dashboards

We are excited to announce more ways you can share insights through Google Analytics. We have upgraded the existing custom report sharing, plus added the ability for you to share advanced segments and dashboards with other Analytics users.

To try this out, look for the Share button in any of these sections:

• Custom Report: In the Actions menu on the table that lists your reports.
• Dashboard: In the top-left corner over your dashboard.
• Advanced Segment: Visit the Admin tab in the top right corner of your account, then select Advanced Segments to enable sharing.

The button will bring up a URL that you can send to anyone you’d like or publish on your blog.

Sharing this link will only share a template, not the data about your site traffic. So for example sharing a dashboard will provide a user with the dashboard name, widgets and data fields to be populated with data from their Analytics account.

Important Tip: Links to all shared templates are permanent snapshots. That means after you have shared the link, you can safely change or even delete a dashboard in your account and it will not change the experience for anyone using the previously shared link.

When you or someone else opens the link, they will be prompted to choose a profile in which to import the custom report, advanced segment or dashboard. They will also have the option to change the name. After that is complete they will see the template populated with data from their account.

To get you started, here are a few templates from Google Analytics Advocate Justin Cutroni, to try in your account:

• Basic blog dashboard: If you’re a blogger you can use this dashboard to keep tabs on where your readers come from and what they do on your site.
• Mobile ecommerce dashboard: If you’re getting into mobile commerce use this dashboard to get an end-to-end view of your customer experience.
• Site Performance dashboard: How about a report for the IT team? This dashboard contains various speed metrics to help identify issues with your pages or servers.
• Engaged Traffic advanced segment: This advanced segment measures traffic that views at least three pages AND spends more than three minutes on your site. Why do these people love you so much? Find out!
• Daily Ecommerce report: Use this report to keep tabs on all parts of the ecommerce lifecycle: acquisition, engagement and conversion in one single table.

As always, please let us know what you think about this new feature. We can’t wait to see all the new and creative customizations you will share.

- Gilles Roux, Google Analytics team

Customize your standard reports

Designing a good custom report can be challenging, and sometimes all you really want is a slightly different version of a standard report. Using the new "Customize" feature in Google Analytics allows you to tweak our definitions of Standard Reports into your own Custom Reports.

So, what's new?

There is a new button in the action bar on all tabular standard reports in Analytics, labeled "Customize". 

Where to find the "Customize" option on standard reports

Clicking this button loads the custom report builder. From there, you are just clicks away from your own custom report.

An example of a customized standard report

What can I use it for?

Here are some example use cases to get the ideas flowing:

• New metrics, familiar reports - The best metrics are the ones that provide actionable insights into your business. Try adding different metric groups to your favorite reports to see if how it impacts your view of conversion rates.

• Drill down into your data - Sometimes, the best route to a particular piece of data is a drilldown not found in any standard report. You could customize the Language report to drill into search terms for a language-by-language comparison of your organic search traffic.

• Filter to find insights - Ad campaigns can span many networks. Try customizing the AdWords Campaigns report and applying a filter for Ad Distribution Network matches "Google Search" to see your performance on only Google Search. 

What else should I know? 

• Not all standard reports can be transformed into custom reports. Look for the "Customize" button to see if a particular report can be customized.

• Learn more about Customizing Standard Reports in our Help Center.

We hope you'll gain even greater insights into your data by customizing the power of Google Analytics standard reports to more closely match your business needs.

- Chris Anderson, Google Analytics team