Get more out of Google Analytics with Industry Benchmarking

07 Mar, 2008 | Google Analytics

Do you ever wonder how your site compares to your industry as a whole? Well now there is a new feature within Google Analytics which allows you to do just that. If you opt -in to the the new industry benchmarking feature, you will be able to overlay various industry averages on top of your own statistics.

Industry benchmarking allows you to compare your stats to your industry or any other industry. The data used for this featured is, of course, anonymous and aggregated so don't expect to be seeing any specific competitor data.

From the official analytics blog:

"Industry benchmarking is a commonly requested new service that enables customers to see how their site data compares to sites in any available industry vertical. We believe this data will provide actionable insights by providing context for users to understand how their site is doing. For example, if you have a travel website and you get a spike in traffic on Mondays, you may want to know whether other travel sites get that same spike on Mondays."

"You can also compare your site against an industry vertical different than your own. For example, you might see that your industry's traffic dips at certain times of the year while another industry's traffic increases. Based on that information, you may wish to explore cross promotional opportunities to drive traffic back and forth."

Settiing up Industry Benchmarking

When you log in to your Google Analytics account for the first time since this update, you will see the following message on your screen:

Press the 'Accept' button to being data sharing (don't worry you competitors won't be able to see your specific data!). Then look for the following link:

And then, to enable data-sharing you will need to tick the box next to 'Anonymously with Google products and the benchmarking service' as seen below:

Once you have clicked 'Save Changes' data-sharing will be enabled.

When can you expect to see the benchmarking data?

Unfortunately, this can take up to 2 weeks. What! Why? Well, apparently first Google needs users to opt-in to the data sharing feature so that they can begin collecting data. Once this is done they will begin publishing the aggregated data within the industry benchmarking feature.

Stay tuned for an update on using the benchmarking data...

Additional Reading:

Benchmarking FAQs

Data-sharing options FAQs

Bookmark it!

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