The Internet Marketing Driver

  • GSQi Home
  • About Glenn Gabe
  • SEO Services
    • Algorithm Update Recovery
    • Technical SEO Audits
    • Website Redesigns and Site Migrations
    • SEO Training
  • Blog
    • Web Stories
  • Contact GSQi

How To Use Social Reports in Google Analytics To Analyze Specific Blog Posts or Content [Tutorial]

July 18, 2012 By Glenn Gabe 3 Comments

Share
Tweet
Share
Email

Social Reports in Google Analytics

In March of this year, Google Analytics released a set of new reports for measuring the effectiveness of traffic from social networks.  It was a great addition and provides some valuable information about how social is affecting your business.  For example, you can view social referrers, content that received traffic from social networks, view conversations across certain social networks, view conversion data (including last click and assisted attribution), how social visitors flow through your site, and more.

One question I keep getting from business owners is how to easily analyze a piece of content they are tracking?  For example, let’s say a certain blog post went live recently, was heavily shared across social networks, and ended up driving a lot of traffic.  What if you want to isolate that page and view data via GA’s social reports?  Well, you can absolutely do that, and I’m going to walk you through some of the core insights you can glean from the reporting.  Let’s get started.

Isolating a Blog Post or Piece of Content
For this tutorial, I’m going to use a recent post of mine, which ended up being popular within the search marketing industry.  Last month, I attended the Google Agency Summit and found out that the old Google Wonder Wheel’s engine actually drives the Contextual Targeting Tool.  The Wonder Wheel was a great tool for finding related searches, based on actual Google data, and many in my industry loved using it.  Needless to say, search marketers were thrilled to find out the functionality can still be found in the Contextual Targeting Tool.  The post ended up getting shared quite a bit on Twitter, Facebook, and Google+.  Let’s take a look at the social reporting for this post.

You can isolate a page in two ways via social reporting in Google Analytics.  The first way is from the overview page, and the second way is from the Pages report.  Let’s jump to the Pages report, which will list your top content receiving traffic from social networks.  You can access this report by clicking “Traffic Sources”, “Social”, and then “Pages”.

The Pages Report in Google Analytics Social Reports

At this point, you will see a list of pages from your site, along with key metrics like visits, pageviews, time on site, data hub activities, etc.  I’ll cover what data hub partners are in a second.  For now, find the page you want to analyze and click the URL.  For me, I’m going to click the URL for my Google Wonder Wheel post, which had 1040 visits from social networks from June 20th through June 30th.

After clicking the URL, the Social Referral tab is the default view.  Here, you can view the social networks driving the most traffic to the post, along with viewing trending for all traffic versus trending for social traffic.  In addition, the primary dimension in the report is “Social Network”, which as I mentioned above, will display a list of social networks driving the most traffic to this specific post.  For me, Twitter, Facebook, and Google+ drove the most traffic to this post over the 10 day period.

Social Networks in Social Reports

Social Actions and Data Hub Partners
If you click the “Social Network and Action” dimension, you will see Data Hub Activities for the post. Data Hub partners are social networks that have chosen to share additional information with Google so users of Google Analytics can view that data within Google Analytics reporting.  The activity stream from data hub partners can provide rich information that can be organized and viewed via Social Reports.

Unfortunately, some of the big players in Social are not participating, like Facebook and Twitter.  This means you will only get basic data in your reporting from these networks.  Current Data Hub partners include Google+, Delicious, Blogger, Disqus, Diigo, Pocket, etc.  You can tell which social network is a data hub partner since there will be a data hub icon next to participating networks.  See the icon below.

Data Hub Partners in Social Reports

Back to our example.  If you click the “Social Network and Action” dimension, you can analyze Data Hub activities for specific pieces of content.  For example, you can view Google+ posts, +1’s, reshares, bookmarks from Delicious, Pocket saves, etc.  You can also view a graphical breakdown of the data hub activities to the right.  Again, I wish more social networks were data hub partners, so you could get a full view of activities like tweets, likes, etc. from major networks like Twitter and Facebook.  That said, this is still valuable, and we’ll get more granular next.

Data Hub Activities in Social Reports

Activity Stream and Special Treatment for Data Hub Partners
You can click the Activity Stream tab to view specific data hub activities across social networks.  Sure, it’s cool to see top-level activity like we’ve seen so far, but the activity stream gets much more specific.  When clicking the tab, you will see actual conversations and events from across data hub partners.  The default tab is the Conversations tab, which will display shares and comments from data hub actions. You will see specific users, their shares, what they wrote when sharing the content, resharing, or commenting on a post.   For example, you can view Google+ and Diigo information below for my Wonder Wheel post.

Activity Stream in Social Reports

It’s important to note that while analyzing the activity stream (starting with conversations), you’ll notice some great functionality for Google+ content.  For example, you can click a person’s photo to view their G+ profile and there are icons that let you know if the person shared an update, reshared someone else’s update, or commented on a G+ update.  Then you can click the dropdown arrow on the far right to view additional information, including the Google+ ripple for the piece of content, you can view specific shares on G+, etc.  This is awesome data, as you can find influencers, view their posts about your content, view +1’s from other G+ users, etc.

Viewing additional data for data hub partners.

The Power of Ripples
In particular, viewing the Google+ Ripple for a specific URL reveals incredible data.  I’ve written previously about how to analyze G+ Ripples, and you should definitely check out that post.  Ripples enable you to see how your content was shared across Google+, from user to user.  You can also view influencers, sharing sequences, links to each public Google+ post, view shares over time, etc.  Spend some time with Ripples… you can find some incredible information.

Viewing Google Plus Ripples for Specific URL's

Events in Activity Stream
The second dimension in the Activity Stream report is Events.  By clicking this dimension, you can view additional information beyond just the conversations people are having about your content.  For example, you can view data hub partner events like +1’s, delicious bookmarks, pocket saves, trackbacks, etc.  I’ll cover more about trackbacks shortly, but this was a cool addition by Google recently.

Similar to what we did earlier, using the dropdown arrow on the right side enables you to see the actual activity on each social network.  For example, selecting “View Activity” for a delicious bookmark takes you to the actual bookmark page.  Here, you can view the profile of the person bookmarking your content, view comments, etc.  This is a great way to understand what people are saying about your content, find influencers, connect with similar people, etc.

Events in Social Reports in Google Analytics

Quick Tip:
By clicking the social network logo in the events list for any action, you can link to a page that shows all activity from that specific social network.  For example, clicking the delicious icon in the screenshot below, you will be taken to all delicious events for this specific piece of content.

A Note About Twitter
I mentioned earlier that you can only get advanced level data from Data Hub Partners.  That’s true (and unfortunate), but there is some additional data you can get from Twitter.  If you click the the link for Twitter when viewing social networks in your reporting, you will see a list of t.co links (shortened links from Twitter).  If you move fast enough, you can enter those shortened URL’s in Twitter Search to view the actual tweets.  Then you can check out each Twitter user to find influencers, follow them, engage them, etc.  Twitter Search does not go back very far, so you’ll need to move fast.  You can also use a number of third party tools to mine Twitter data, but that’s for another post. :)

Analyzing Tweets via Social Reports in Google Analytics

Trackbacks
If you click back to the Social Referral tab, and click the “Social Referrers” dimension, you might see “Trackbacks” listed in the report.  Note, you might have to use the rows dropdown at the bottom of the report to reveal additional rows to view trackbacks.  If you click the “Trackbacks” link, and then click the Activity Stream tab, you will see inbound links that Google Analytics picked up.  Trackbacks will display links to your content from outside your site (inbound links).

Viewing trackbacks in social reports

From this report, you can view the pages linking to your content by clicking the link icon next to the URL, or by clicking the arrow dropdown and clicking “View Activity”.

Trackbacks are a Great Addition, But Not Perfect
It’s important to understand the links that your content is building on several levels.  First, you can start to understand what people are saying about your content, what types of sites are linking to you, understand the authors of that content, what the comments are saying, etc.  That’s all really useful information.  Second, you want to understand the SEO power of those links. Are they relevant websites, is the content high quality, is it a spammy website, etc?  Third, you can absolutely use this intelligence to connect with influencers, whether that’s the blog author, or people commenting.  And no, this isn’t as robust as using Open Site Explorer, Majestic SEO Tools, Google and Bing Webmaster Tools, etc., but it’s nice having this data in Google Analytics.

Social Conversion Data for Specific Content
GA’s Social Reports include a valuable conversion report that displays the last click and assisted conversions from social networks. This is important data to analyze, since you can understand how social networks impact conversion (by directly impacting conversion and/or assisting conversion).

But, the social conversion report is not broken down by content.  In order to get that data, you would need to create an advanced segment for social traffic, then view top landing pages with that segment active.  Then you can analyze the conversion impact of visits to that piece of content from social networks.  At a top-level view, it’s great to see conversion data from each social network, but if you are laser focused on a specific piece of content, then the standard social reports won’t really help you.

Summary – Get Social with Google Analytics
As you can see, Social Reporting was a great addition for Google Analytics.  It’s ultra-important to understand the impact of social traffic, what’s being shared across social networks, which influencers are sharing your content, who is engaging that content, etc.  It’s also important to analyze specific pieces of content that are being actively shared across social networks.  I hope this post explained more about how to find and analyze data for a specific post.  But like anything else in digital marketing, you need to test it out for yourself!  So target a piece of content, fire up Google Analytics, and hit the social reports.  Good luck.

GG

Share
Tweet
Share
Email

Filed Under: google-analytics, google-plus, social-media, tools, web-analytics

Connect with Glenn Gabe today!

Latest Blog Posts

  • How to compare hourly sessions in Google Analytics 4 to track the impact from major Google algorithm updates (like broad core updates)
  • It’s all in the (site) name: 9 tips for troubleshooting why your site name isn’t showing up properly in the Google search results
  • Google Explore – The sneaky mobile content feed that’s displacing rankings in mobile search and could be eating clicks and impressions
  • Bing Chat in the Edge Sidebar – An AI companion that can summarize articles, provide additional information, and even generate new content as you browse the web
  • The Google “Code Red” That Triggered Thousands of “Code Reds” at Publishers: Bard, Bing Chat, And The Potential Impact of AI in the Search Results
  • Continuous Scroll And The GSC Void: Did The Launch Of Continuous Scroll In Google’s Desktop Search Results Impact Impressions And Clicks? [Study]
  • How to analyze the impact of continuous scroll in Google’s desktop search results using Analytics Edge and the GSC API
  • Percent Human: A list of tools for detecting lower-quality AI content
  • True Destination – Demystifying the confusing, but often accurate, true destination url for redirects in Google Search Console’s coverage reporting
  • Google’s September 2022 Broad Core Product Reviews Update (BCPRU) – The complexity and confusion when major algorithm updates overlap

Web Stories

  • Google’s December 2021 Product Reviews Update – Key Findings
  • Google’s April 2021 Product Reviews Update – Key Points For Site Owners and Affiliate Marketers
  • Google’s New Page Experience Signal
  • Google’s Disqus Indexing Bug
  • Learn more about Web Stories developed by Glenn Gabe

Archives

  • March 2023
  • February 2023
  • January 2023
  • December 2022
  • November 2022
  • October 2022
  • September 2022
  • August 2022
  • July 2022
  • June 2022
  • May 2022
  • April 2022
  • March 2022
  • February 2022
  • January 2022
  • December 2021
  • November 2021
  • October 2021
  • August 2021
  • July 2021
  • June 2021
  • April 2021
  • March 2021
  • February 2021
  • January 2021
  • December 2020
  • November 2020
  • October 2020
  • September 2020
  • August 2020
  • July 2020
  • June 2020
  • May 2020
  • April 2020
  • March 2020
  • February 2020
  • January 2020
  • December 2019
  • November 2019
  • October 2019
  • September 2019
  • August 2019
  • July 2019
  • June 2019
  • May 2019
  • April 2019
  • March 2019
  • February 2019
  • January 2019
  • December 2018
  • November 2018
  • October 2018
  • September 2018
  • August 2018
  • July 2018
  • June 2018
  • May 2018
  • April 2018
  • March 2018
  • February 2018
  • January 2018
  • December 2017
  • November 2017
  • October 2017
  • September 2017
  • August 2017
  • July 2017
  • June 2017
  • May 2017
  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • February 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • May 2015
  • April 2015
  • March 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012
  • October 2012
  • September 2012
  • August 2012
  • July 2012
  • June 2012
  • May 2012
  • April 2012
  • March 2012
  • GSQi Home
  • About Glenn Gabe
  • SEO Services
  • Blog
  • Contact GSQi
Copyright © 2023 G-Squared Interactive LLC. All Rights Reserved. | Privacy Policy
This website uses cookies to improve your experience. Are you ok with the site using cookies? You can opt-out at a later time if you wish. Cookie settings ACCEPT
Privacy & Cookies Policy

Privacy Overview

This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may have an effect on your browsing experience. You can read our privacy policy for more information.
Cookie Consent