<table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="0" border="0" ><tr><td valign="top" style="font: inherit;"><span class="Apple-style-span" style="font-size: small; "><div bgcolor="#ffffff"><table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="5" width="712" align="center" border="0"><tbody><tr><td width="371"><br><p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" color="#666666" size="+1">Google Analytics Benchmarking Newsletter</font> <br><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" color="#666666" size="+0">2011, Volume 1, July 2011</font></p></td><td width="214"><img alt="Google" width="207" height="40" align="right"></td></tr></tbody></table><table cellspacing="0" cellpadding="5" width="712" align="center" border="0"><tbody><tr><td><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><h2>1. Introduction</h2><p>Welcome to the first volume of the Analytics Benchmarking Newsletter!</p><p>This month, we are replacing the standard "benchmarking" report in your Google Analytics account with data
shared in this newsletter. We are using this newsletter as an experiment to surface more useful or interesting data to Analytics users. Data contained here comes from all websites which have opted-in anonymous data sharing with Google Analytics. Only those website administrators which have enabled this <a href="http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/static.py?page=troubleshooter.cs&problem=gatsc&selected=a11_a11h2_a11h2t1&ctx=gatsc_a11_a11h2_a11h2t1_87515" target="_blank">anonymous data sharing</a> will receive this "benchmarking" newsletter.</p><p>You may be wondering, how many websites are in this "anonymous data sharing" pool? Currently, hundreds of thousands, and we've endeavored to make all of the metrics here statistically significant.</p><p>The date range of comparison for this newsletter is from November 1, 2010 - February 1, 2011. Comparison is done with data from November 1, 2009 - February 1, 2010. Absolute metrics
such as total # visits, pageviews, or conversions for all opted-in websites are not reported.</p><p>To simplify the prose, the phrase "websites" will represent "websites which have opted into anonymous data sharing with Google Analytics" for the rest of this newsletter.</p><h2>2. Site Metrics</h2><p>Compared to a year ago, websites have seen reduced pages / visit, average time on site, as well as bounce rate.</p><p></p><table align="center" border="1" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="5"><tbody><tr><td></td><th>11/1/09 - 2/1/10</th><th>11/1/10 - 2/1/11</th><th>Difference</th></tr><tr><td><strong>Pages/Visit</strong></td><td>4.9</td><td>4.5</td><td>-0.4</td></tr><tr><td><strong>Bounce Rate</strong></td><td>48.2%</td><td>47.0%</td><td>-1.2%</td></tr><tr><td><strong>Avg Time on Site</strong></td><td>5:49</td><td>5:23</td><td>-0:26</td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><h3>2.1 Breakdown by Geography</h3><p>Our anonymous database has aggregated geographic breakdown at
the country level. Here are a few representative countries and their respective aggregate metrics. The first number in each cell represents the metric for the date range 11/1/10-2/1/11. The parenthesized number is the Year over Year delta compared to a year ago.</p><p></p><table align="center" border="1" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="5"><tbody><tr><th>Country</th><th>Pages / Visit</th><th>Bounce Rate</th><th>Avg Time on Site</th></tr><tr><td><strong>United States</strong></td><td>4.7 (-0.1)</td><td>42.5% (-6.1%)</td><td>6:06 (-0:10)</td></tr><tr><td><strong>United Kingdom</strong></td><td>4.9 (-0.3)</td><td>41.5% (+0.2%)</td><td>5:38 (-0.27)</td></tr><tr><td><strong>France</strong></td><td>4.4 (-0.4)</td><td>49.7% (+1.4%)</td><td>4:40 (-0:08)</td></tr><tr><td><strong>Brazil</strong></td><td>4.1 (-0.1)</td><td>47.8% (-2.9%)</td><td>5:20 (+0:03)</td></tr><tr><td><strong>China</strong></td><td>4.1 (-0.1)</td><td>58.2% (+1.0%)</td><td>3:46
(+0:37)</td></tr><tr><td><strong>Japan</strong></td><td>3.9 (-0.1)</td><td>48.6% (-9.0%)</td><td>3:47 (-2:59)</td></tr></tbody></table><p></p>For bounce rate, the distribution by country is plotted below:<p></p><center><img></center><p></p>The distribution above is annotated with some countries -- which seem to indicate a story of leisure and stage of economic development. For a related metric: average time on site, the distribution by country is plotted below:<p></p><center><img></center><p></p><p>The type of countries annotated in the average time on site graph above seem to be in reverse order as those in the bounce rate distribution.</p><h3>2.2 Breakdown by Traffic Sources</h3><p>Traffic sources below are identified by how the "source" and "medium""" parameters are received by the Google Analytics collecting servers. Here is an <a href="http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?answer=60126"
target="_blank">article</a> describing what these designations refer to.</p><p></p><table align="center" border="1" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="5"><tbody><tr><th>Traffic Sources</th><th>Pages / Visit</th><th>Bounce Rate</th><th>Avg Time on Site</th></tr><tr><td><strong>Direct</strong></td><td>4.0 (-0.5)</td><td>47.2% (-4.0%)</td><td>5:21 (-0:07)</td></tr><tr></tr><tr><td><strong>Referral</strong></td><td>5.0 (+0.1)</td><td>43.1% (-1.1%)</td><td>6:36 (-1:48)</td></tr><tr><td><strong>Organic Search</strong></td><td>4.9 (-0.1)</td><td>47.9% (-1.1%)</td><td>4:43 (+0:06)</td></tr><tr><td><strong>CPC Search</strong></td><td>5.6 (+0.0)</td><td>41.4 (-1.7%)</td><td>3:57(+0:07)</td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><h3>2.4 Conversion Rate Distribution</h3><p>Many marketers' favorite metric is conversion rate. Here is the worldwide distribution of Google Analytics "goal conversion rate" by country.</p><p></p><center><img></center><p></p><p>Would anyone have
guessed that states which are known for conversions are also high for their citizens' goal conversion rate? Note that for some states with few population, the statistical significance of the conversion metric comes into doubt.</p><h2>3. Traffic Sources</h2><p>Traffic sources below are identified by how the "source" and "medium" parameters are received by the Google Analytics collecting servers. Here is an <a href="http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?answer=60126" target="_blank">article</a> describing what these designations refer to.</p><p></p><table align="center" border="1" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="5"><tbody><tr><th>% Visits from Sources</th><th>11/1/09 - 2/1/10</th><th>11/1/10 - 2/1/11</th><th>Difference</th></tr><tr><td><strong>Direct</strong></td><td>36.5%</td><td>36.8%</td><td>+0.3%</td></tr><tr><td><strong>Referral</strong></td><td>21.0%</td><td>19.4%</td><td>-1.6%</td></tr><tr><td><strong>Search
Engines</strong></td><td>27.0%</td><td>28.0%</td><td>+1.0%</td></tr><tr><td><strong>Other</strong></td><td>15.5%</td><td>15.8%</td><td>+0.3%</td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><h2>4. Operating Systems</h2><p>Browsers and Operation Systems (OS) are identified by the "referrer" string sent by users' browsers.</p><p></p><table align="center" border="1" cellspacing="0" cellpadding="5"><tbody><tr><th>% Visits from OS</th><th>11/1/09 - 2/1/10</th><th>11/1/10 - 2/1/11</th><th>Difference</th></tr><tr><td><strong>Windows</strong></td><td>89.9%</td><td>84.8%</td><td>-5.1%</td></tr><tr><td><strong>Macintosh</strong></td><td>4.5%</td><td>5.2%</td><td>+0.7%</td></tr><tr><td><strong>Linux</strong></td><td>0.6%</td><td>0.7%</td><td>+0.1%</td></tr><tr><td><strong>Other</strong></td><td>5%</td><td>9.3%</td><td>+4.3%</td></tr></tbody></table><p></p><h2>5. Comments</h2><p>This is the first volume of our Analytics Benchmarking Newsletter. We hope that it provides useful
insights. If you have specific comments or suggestions on how to improve this newsletter, please send your feedback to: <a href="mailto:analytics-benchmarking@google.com" target="_blank">analytics-benchmarking@google.<wbr>com</a>.</p><p></p></font><p><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Happy analyzing,<br></font><font face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Google Analytics Team</font></p></td></tr><tr><td><hr align="left" width="95%" noshade="" size="1"><p><font color="#666666" size="-2" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><strong>Email preferences:</strong> You have received this message as part of the Benchmarking feature in Google Analytics. To stop receiving the Benchmarking report, you can turn off Anonymous data sharing in Google Analytics account settings. Google Inc.</font></p><p><font color="#666666" size="-2" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif">Copyright 2011. Google is a trademark of Google Inc. All other company and product
names may be trademarks of the respective companies with which they are associated.</font><font color="#666666" size="-2" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"> 1600 Amphitheatre Parkway Mountain View, CA 94043</font></p><div><font color="#666666" size="-2" face="Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif"><br></font></div></td></tr></tbody></table></div></span></td></tr></table>