Using Annotations in Google Analytics to manage changes on your website

Being an avid lover of Google Analytics allows me the ability to stay on top of the latest changes to the web analytics platform.  They recently added the ability to add annotations to the web analytics data that you collect about your website which is now available on all Google Analytics accounts.  This is really a very useful improvement to Google Analytics and for anyone developing a website over a period of time it’s pretty valuable.

So what’s the big deal with Annotations?

Annotations give you a way to mark a specific day on your Google Analytics account to track and manage changes you are making to a website.  In the past I’ve found myself saying “How do I know that this change I am making to my website is a good change or a bad change?” and that answer largely went unanswered until now.

Now you can add annotations to days when you’ve made changes to your website and know exactly what day a change was made when you look at your web analytics.  It’s very useful if you are from the school of thought in web development that when you change your website it does have an effect on your visitors.

How to add Annotations in your Google Analytics Account

So now that you understand how annotations can be used to help you and your website let’s talk about actually how you can set them up and use them in your Google Analytics account.  First of all, you’ll need a Google Analytics account.  Click here to get an account if you don’t already have one and once you’ve got one simply take these steps…

• Login to your Google Analytics account
• Click on your website’s website profile
• Click the down tab located in the main dashboard visits area
• Click the “+ Create new Annotation” link
• Enter the date of the annotation, add an annotation a.k.a. “a note”, select whether you want the annotation “Shared” or “Private” (You would select “Shared” if you had were sharing the annotation among other people who have access to the Google Analytics account and website profile you are setting annotations on specifically)
• Lastly, click “Save” and you are now done creating an annotation

Now that you’ve got it the annotation created you can view it by selecting the day you created the annotation on or a range of days that contain the annotation.  When it’s all said and done the ability to add annotations in Google Analytics can help you identify changes that you made to your website and the outcome of those changes giving you greater insight into what your website is doing and how it’s doing it.

Luc Arnold