How To Create a Custom Report in Google Analytics by Customizing a Standard Report [Tutorial]

March 20, 2012 By Glenn Gabe

Custom reports in Google Analytics are incredibly powerful.They enable you to tailor reporting, based on your own business, your own conversion goals, key metrics, etc.The problem is that custom reports can be confusing to create. You have metric drilldowns, dimension groups, report views, filters, etc. If you aren’t familiar with creating custom reports, the interface could be daunting. That said, you shouldn’t give up trying to create custom reports! Again, they can be very powerful for analyzing traffic.

In this post, I’m going to walk you through creating a custom report that displays organic search traffic from mobile devices. The report will also enable you to view those visits by location. It’s a nifty custom report for any local business. The report lets you quickly view top keywords leading to your site via organic search (mobile traffic), but also lets you view how many of those visits are from potential buyers (people located near your business).

In addition, Google recently released functionality for customizing a standard report versus having to create every custom report from scratch. This is a great option if you are new to custom reports and want to tailor some of the existing reports in Google Analytics to fit your needs.

Creating a Custom Report from a Standard Report
As I mentioned earlier, we’ll start with a standard report in Google Analytics and tailor it to meet our goals. Since we are going to create a report showing organic search from mobile devices, let’s start with the Mobile Overview report and customize it to display:

Organic keywords leading to the site (mobile traffic).
The region those visits are from (i.e. states).
The cities within those regions that visits are coming from.
The mobile operating system from those visits (android, iphone, etc.)

The goal of the report is to know the organic keywords leading to the site from mobile visits, and how many of those visits are from potential customers (people located near your business).

How to Create the Custom Report (from a Standard Report)

1. Open up Google Analytics, click the “Audience” tab, and then expand the “Mobile” link in the left side navigation. Click the “Overview” link to view the Mobile Overview report.

2. Click the “Customize” link in the action bar of the report. This will enable you to customize this report for your own needs (by creating a custom report based on this standard report). Note, not all standard reports can be customized this way. Tabular reports can be customized this way, but you will find other reports within GA that cannot be converted to custom reports:

3. When you click “customize”, the standard report will be loaded into “report builder”. The initial view will show you the current report mapped out already in report builder. Then you can tailor the various elements, based on what you are trying to achieve with your own custom report.

4. You can keep the current metric groups if you want. If you ever want to go back and customize the metric groups, you can by editing the custom report. For example, you definitely want to set up various conversion goals and events so you can better understand quality traffic. Once you do, you can add them to your metric groups so you can view performance by traffic in your custom report.

5. Under dimension drilldowns, you will only see “Mobile” listed. Adding more dimensions will enable you to drill into each level to find more data. As I explained above, we want to drill into mobile traffic to reveal the organic keywords leading to the site. Then we want to view location by region and state. So, let’s add those additional dimensions to our report.

6. Click the “Add Dimension” box in dimension drilldowns and select “Keyword” from the “Advertising” list.

7. Next, add more dimensions to your report. Click the “Add Dimension” box again, and include the “Region” dimension from the “Visitors” list. After adding “Region”, you should go through the same process to add another dimension for “City”.

8. Filter Your Traffic
The last step is to make sure the traffic is only from organic search. We only want to view mobile traffic from organic search, so we need to tell Google Analytics to filter that traffic for us. Click the “Add a Filter” box under the “Filters” category. Select the “Medium” dimension under the “Traffic Sources” list. Then select “include” from the first filter dropdown, leave “Medium” as the dimension, leave “Exact” in the third dropdown, and then enter “organic” in the text box (without quotes). See the screenshot below to follow along. This text tells Google Analytics to include all traffic that exactly matches “organic” as the medium. “Organic” is what’s listed for all organic search traffic.

Congratulations! You just created a custom report, based on a standard report. Click “Save” at the bottom of the report and you’ll be taken to the functioning report in Google Analytics.

You can start drilling into the report by clicking “Yes” in the mobile report, which will reveal all organic keywords from mobile traffic. Then you can click any keyword to view the region those visits are from. If you click the region, you can view the cities within that region. Again, this report can help you identify mobile traffic from organic search, the keywords being searched for, and identify if these are potential customers (based on their proximity to your local business).

Bonus: Access the Custom Report Template
As an added bonus, I have shared the template for this custom report and you can access it by clicking the link below. Once you click the link, you can add this template to a Google Analytics profile and start using the report today. You can also analyze the report setup so you can work through creating similar custom reports. Click the following link to access the custom report for organic search visits from mobile devices.

Summary – Customize It!
I hope this post helped clear up some of the confusion associated with building custom reports in Google Analytics. I love that Google added the ability to customize standard reports, since that’s sometimes all you want to do… If you are new to custom reports, then I recommend starting with a standard report and then customizing that report to fit your needs. Going through that process should help you get more comfortable with working in report builder and could lead to more advanced custom reports. And that can all lead to advanced analysis of your traffic. Good luck.

Announcing a Premium Webinar on Local SEO and Google Analytics for Search, G-Squared and The Marketing Spot Team Up

February 1, 2011 By Glenn Gabe

When speaking with local businesses about digital marketing, there are two topics that consistently come up (and for good reason). First, with the importance of SEO for generating new local business, companies want to know how to rank highly in local search (and across engines). Strong local rankings can often lead to increased exposure, more targeted traffic, and more revenue. Second, both small and large businesses want to know how to analyze the impact of their online marketing efforts, which can be a daunting experience if you don’t understand the foundational aspects of tracking and analytics.

So, based on the importance of these two topics, I’m happy to announce that I’ve partnered with Jay Ehret of The Marketing Spot to offer a premium webinar covering Local SEO and Google Analytics for Search. Jay is a small business marketing expert and has been helping companies expand their businesses for the past 15 years. He’s a really smart guy, a savvy small business marketer, and I’m excited to be working with him on this webinar. The 90 minute webinar is on February 24th at 1PM ET and you can register now via EventBrite (by using the link listed above).

Google Analytics for Search
My section of the webinar will cover Google Analytics, the powerful (yet free) web analytics package from Google. If you’ve read my blog before, then you know how important I believe tracking your digital marketing efforts is. Without a robust tracking solution in place, you will have no way of understanding the true ROI of your efforts. And if you can’t optimize your campaigns based on performance, you will essentially be flying blind. Please don’t fly blind… there’s no reason to, and it’s why I write extensively about web analytics on my blog, my Search Engine Journal column, and my contributions on other industry blogs.

During the webinar, I will cover a number of important topics, including:

An introduction to Google Analytics and the importance of tracking your digital marketing efforts.
How to analyze and understand your current SEO performance.
How to access important Search-related reports in Google Analytics in order to better analyze search engines, keywords, landing pages from organic search, etc.
How to filter both paid and organic search to better analyze your Search efforts.
How to easily track your Google AdWords campaigns in Google Analytics.
An introduction to the (new) Google AdWords reporting in Google Analytics.
How to use Campaign Tracking to identify campaign performance within Google Analytics.
An introduction to Conversion Goals and Events, along with how to set them up for your own business.

As I mentioned above, Jay Ehret from The Marketing Spot will be covering Local SEO with a focus on Google Place Pages. His section of the webinar will cover:

Website optimization for Local Search.
An introduction to Google Place Pages and why they are critically important for local search.
How to optimize your Place Page.
Local reviews and how they can help your business.
Understanding outside influences to local search, and what you need to do in order to benefit from them (including data sources, inbound links, etc.)

Pricing, Downloads, and Bonuses – What You’ll Get With The Webinar
Jay and I want to make sure that webinar attendees are in good hands both during the webinar and after. We know that there will be a lot of information shared, along with several tactical lessons included during the 90 minute session. With that in mind, we’ve decided to include the following items with registration:

A downloadable video of the 90 minute webinar.
A comprehensive workbook with step-by-step instructions based on the lessons provided in the webinar.
Bonus 1: A free copy of my online marketing ebook “Taking Control of Your Online Marketing”, a $50 value.
Bonus 2: One month free membership to Jay Ehret’s new membership site: The Entrepreneur’s Edge, an archive of marketing resources and tutorials for small business owners, a $69 value.

Webinar Pricing:
The webinar is $79 and you can register now by visiting our registration page on EventBrite.
Early Registration Discount Code: As part of the kickoff, we are offering a special discount code for early registrations. If you register by Sunday, February 13th, you will receive a 30% discount. This means you’ll get access to the premium 90 minute webinar and all of the extras listed above for only $55.30. Yes, that’s a strange total price, but still an incredible value. :)

Webinar Registration:
So don’t hesitate, register for the webinar today:
Use the following discount code to receive 30% off: GSQi_13
Register for the webinar: Local SEO and Google Analytics Webinar

I look forward to seeing you on the 24th!

Groupon Shows Up in the Clustered Results of Google Place Search. Why This Can Be A Problem For Local Businesses

January 18, 2011 By Glenn Gabe

In October of 2010, Google launched Place Search, which was a big change for its local search results. As part of the change, Google began clustering information in the search results for specific listings. The clustered results include information from a number of sources, including CitySearch, Yelp, TripAdvisor, etc. You can see a screenshot below of what the clustered results look like in Place Search. By providing clustered information directly in the search results, Google’s goal was to aggregate rich local information so users could find what they needed without having to dig. This information was usually contained just on the Place Page for a given result, and not in the search results.

An example of the clustered results in Google Place Search:

Groupon Shows Up, And Why That Matters
As I mentioned earlier, there are several sources of information that Google is pulling from in order to provide the clustered information for local businesses. Additional sources to the ones I mentioned above include InsiderPages, Expedia, UrbanSpoon, Zagat, etc. As I was performing research for a client, I came across an interesting addition to the various sources of clustered information in local search. I saw Groupon showing up! That’s right, the clustered results for some listings provided links to Groupon reviews for the company at hand. To clarify, the link in the clustered results took me to the Groupon page for the specific company. So, if a local business was ranking highly in Place Search, and it had run a Groupon (or multiple Groupons), I saw a link to the Groupon page directly in the search results. See a screenshot below of this happening.

Groupon showing up in the clustered results in Google Place Search:

The Problem for Local Businesses
Although my immediate reaction was positive, I quickly started to think about the implications for local businesses. For those of you unfamiliar with Groupon, it’s an extremely popular group buying site. And by “popular”, I mean it’s big (and hot) enough that it turned down a $6 billion offer from Google to buy the company. Instead, they are supposedly preparing for an IPO.

In a nutshell, businesses offer a heavy discount and set a threshold for the number of units they sell. This means that you only receive the discount if a certain number of people buy the Groupon. For example, 51% off X service, but only if 250 people buy the Groupon. So, although there’s a heavy discount, the business knows that they will land a certain amount of revenue (which in theory will make up for the discount). That hasn’t always worked out so well for the business running the Groupon, but that’s for another post. :)

OK, So What’s the Problem With Groupon in the Clustered Results?
Here’s the biggest problem. All of the Groupons I came across were expired. That’s right, when you click through the link in the clustered results, you end up at the Groupon page for the business (with the expired discount staring you in the face.) Imagine a customer searching for a spa treatment, finding your Groupon page (where you provided a huge discount), then finding out they can’t get that discount, and then possibly taking measures based on that fact.

Some people may push for the discount, others may wait for the next Groupon (based on the extreme discount), and others might simply wonder why you offered such a large discount in the first place. None of these situations are great for local businesses, as they can be hurt by their past promotions. Google is essentially embedding links to those discounts into the local results (via the clustered information).

I know several businesses that have run Groupons with varying levels of success, but I’m not sure any of them want their expired Groupons front and center for prospective customers to see.

An example of the clustered results linking to a Groupon page with an expired deal (with a 57% discount):

Adding Insult to (Groupon) Injury
My research also revealed something that could be alarming for some local businesses. On the expired Groupon page, there were other LIVE Groupons for competitors! That’s right, prospective customers visit your expired Groupon page, only to realize they can’t receive your discount, and then they are presented with live discounts from your competition. Wonderful. And remember, these are heavy discounts, not 10% or 20% off. Many are over 50% off… See screenshot below for an example.

A link from a company Groupon page with an expired deal to an active competitor deal:

Here’s the active competitor deal that was linked to from the expired Groupon page seen above:

Recommendations For Dealing With Groupon in Google Place Search:

Form a plan for dealing with the “Re-Groupon”. When you launch a Groupon, understand that it can possibly show up down the line (when prospective customers are searching for your services). Have a plan for communicating why customers either will or won’t receive the Groupon pricing they found in the clustered results.
Be careful how much you discount your products or services on Groupon. One of the core benefits of Groupon for consumers is the massive discount you can receive. I’ve seen some as high as 70% off. If you offer a discount this high, and it ends up showing up in the search results, how will this reflect on your business? Will it hurt your brand? Will questions pop up in a consumer’s mind about why you were offering such a large discount? And will they ultimately push for that discount, wait for the next Groupon, or worse, find your competitor’s Groupon…
If you don’t want your Groupons showing up in the search results, you can ask Groupon for help. Note, I have no idea if they will help keep your Groupons out of the search results, but it’s worth asking. This can potentially apply to both the standard search results and the clustered results in Place Search. Just be aware that this can potentially hurt your Groupon when it’s live. For example, people searching for it on Google won’t be able to find it as easily. Also, Groupon appears to be marking up their pages using rich snippets, which enables Google to collect structured information that can show up in the search results. You can ask Groupon to not mark up your pages. Again, I don’t know if they will do this for you.

Summary – Should Groupons Live Forever?
It’s one thing to have helpful information show up in the clustered results of local search, but it’s another thing to provide links to heavy discounts, for very specific promotions, after they have expired. As a local business, you might end up trying Groupon to see if it works for your company, and that’s a good thing to do. But, you should also understand that the massive discount you are offering could haunt your business for a long time (beyond your Groupon expiration date). That’s especially true if a link to the discount shows up front and center in the search results of Google. For better or for worse, Google never forgets.

Google Testing Stationary Map Versus Scrolling Map for New Local Listings

December 29, 2010 By Glenn Gabe

In October of 2010, Google launched a major change to its local search listings.. As part of the implementation, there was a potentially big change for paid search advertisers. When Google displayed local listings (based on a query it deemed local in nature), it would show a map in the upper right-hand corner of the search results. That’s fine, but that’s not all the map did… As you scrolled down the page, the map scrolled with you. If paid search listings were present on the right-hand side of the page, then the map covered the paid search listings as it scrolled. As you can imagine, this could have a big impact on the performance of your AdWords campaigns.

Why Aren’t You Scrolling?
As I was testing various local searches this morning, I noticed some strange behavior with the map I mentioned above. I noticed that it wasn’t scrolling for some searches, while it was scrolling for others. After analyzing those searches, it became apparent that the scrolling map functionality wasn’t working when there were paid search ads on the right side of the page (underneath the map). Then I tested searches that yielded no paid search ads on the right side of the page, and the map did scroll down the page. I noticed this behavior on my netbook using both Firefox and Chrome.

Maybe others have seen this before, but I haven’t yet. I ran to my other systems to test this out and I did not notice the same results (the map was scrolling for all local searches, no matter if there were paid search ads on the right side or not). So, Google might be testing the impact of using a stationary map versus a scrolling map (for usability, paid search impact, etc.) This is important, because it could have a big impact on how your paid search campaigns perform. If Google chooses to not scroll the map, then your paid search ads will not be covered (which should improve your click-through rate, visits, sales, etc.) If it chooses to keep the scrolling map, then your ads will be covered part of the time (which could decrease your exposure, click-through, sales, etc.)

Anyway, I took some screen captures of this happening and have provided the short videos below. I apologize for the poor resolution, but I had to take screen captures from my netbook. Regardless, you can still see what’s going on with the map. The first video shows a search for Italian restaurants in new york city (where there were paid search ads on the right side). The second is for a search for pizza in dallas, tx (where there weren’t any paid search ads on the right side).

Needless to say, I’m going to keep a close eye on this. Local businesses should too. :)

Video Showing a Stationary Map When Paid Search Ads Are Present on the Right Side of the Page

Video Showing a Scrolling Map When Paid Search Ads Are Not Present on the Right Side of the Page

Ghost Ads – How To Trigger Geotargeted Ads in the Google Ad Preview Tool When Using a Custom Shape

September 28, 2010 By Glenn Gabe

If you are running paid search campaigns via AdWords, then you might be familiar with Google’s Ad Preview Tool. If you’re not familiar with the Ad Preview Tool, it provides an easy way for you to conduct searches using a number of criteria to test your paid search ads. You can do this without impacting your impressions, click-through rate, or Quality Score. Using the Ad Preview Tool, you can enter your desired keywords and then select certain criteria, such as country, language, Google domain, location (such as state or province), etc. Google will then show you which ads are triggered, based on the settings you selected.

Tailoring Your Ad Preview Settings
The Ad Preview Tool is a valuable resource for search marketers, especially because it enables you to work in a safe environment instead of trying to trigger your ads in the wild where you can increase impressions and potentially impact your cost per click (CPC). There are a number of reasons you wouldn’t want to simply visit Google and search for your ads. As explained earlier, you can impact your impressions, click-through rate, and Quality Score (and QS is heavily influenced by click-through rate). If you negatively impact your Quality Score, you could actually end up increasing your cost per click (CPC). So, if you (or your clients) obsessively search Google for your ads every day, you could be increasing your costs. The good news is that you can use the Ad Preview Tool instead. Just make sure everyone involved (including clients) understand that it’s available and how to use it. In addition, personalized search could be impacting which ads show for your searches (being tailored based on your web history and by your previous search behavior). So, using the Ad Preview tool, you can safely and accurately test your paid search ads.

When Problems Arise (Geotargeting Using a Custom Shape)
Based on the title of my post, you might be wondering what they problem is. Well, there is an issue that arises sometimes when you use geotargeting with your campaigns. You can learn more about AdWords Geotargeting via a previous post of mine, but using this feature, you can tell Google where to show your ads. For example, you can tell Google to only show your ads to people in the United States, only in New York, maybe a certain mileage away from a map point, or via a custom targeting option (by using a custom shape). Geotargeting is extremely useful, especially for local businesses.

When you use Geotargeting and you want to test your ads, you need to set the location options in the Ad Preview Tool. For example, if you were targeting New York State, then you would select the United States, and then New York in the dropdown that shows up for State. This works well and you should see your ads trigger for the keywords you are targeting (if they qualify to show up on page 1).

Choosing a location in the Ad Preview Tool:

But, there is a problem when you use the custom targeting option (when you draw a custom shape to target a very specific location). For whatever reason, Google’s Ad Preview Tool has a hard time understanding when to show your ads when you utilize custom shapes (when you use the default state and city options in the Ad Preview Tool). Subsequently, search marketers (or clients) might think that their ads simply aren’t showing. But they actually are… It makes sense when you think about it. Let’s say you were targeting a specific area of Manhattan and not the entire island. How would Google understand when to trigger your ads if you simply select New York State, and then New York City? So, you can run into a problem when trying to find your ads via the ad preview tool if you use a custom shape to define your geotargeting. The good news is that there is a solution, and I’m going to cover that next.

Using a custom shape when setting geotargeting options in AdWords:

How to Trigger Geotargeted Ads When Using a Custom Shape
There is a simple solution for making sure you can test your geotargeted ads that use a custom shape. And, I bet there’s a chance you overlooked this option in the Ad Preview Tool (I know I did when I first started using the Tool). There is an option for “Coordinates” under state and location in the Ad Preview Tool. This will let you enter custom latitude and longitude coordinates.

The Coordinates Field enables you to enter a location’s latitude and longitude:

When you use a custom shape to define your geotargeting, you might notice that Google AdWords provides the lat/long coordinates. That’s what you can use to accurately trigger your ads when using a custom shape.

Below, I’ll walk you through the steps for using those coordinates to trigger your ads in the Ad Preview Tool:

1. Enter your keyword, choose your Google domain, and select your language (like you would normally do in the Ad Preview Tool):

Entering keywords, Google domain, and language in the Ad Preview Tool:

2. For location, select the radio button for “Coordinates” versus using “Country” and “State”. Note, you will need to copy one of the latitude and longitude coordinates that are provided in AdWords after you use a custom shape. For example, you might see something like this under your campaign settings for locations and languages:

[(40.859525,-73.907776), (40.833554,-73.856277),

You would want to select one of those coordinates to include in the “Coordinates” field in the Ad Preview Tool. For example, you could use 40.859525,-73.907776 from the example above. Once you do, you can conduct your test search.

Entering specific latitude and longitude coordinates in the Ad Preview Tool:

That’s it. You should be good to go.

Don’t Get Frustrated, Just Use Exact Coordinates
I hope this quick tutorial explained how to accurately test your geotargeted ads in the Ad Preview Tool when you use custom shapes to set location. If you end up using custom shapes, I can almost guarantee that you’ll get questions from your clients about ads not showing up when using the ad preview tool. Just make sure everyone involved uses the latitude and longitude coordinates when running test searches and you should be fine. :)