Google Adds +1 Button, Social Analytics Reports

Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools have been updated to allow for easier analysis of social actions on your site, how the social feedback impacts your search traffic, and the details of your more social visitor base.

You can find the social data in two locations: Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools.

New +1 Button Metrics in Google Webmaster Tools

Google Webmaster Tools allows you, for a verified site, to look through three new reports:

1. The activity report shows how many times a site or page has been +1’d. It includes data from your +1 button as well as any +1s from the SERP experiment or browser extensions.
2. The audience report, enabled once you have a significant number of +1s, gives you demographic and geographic data on users who have +1’d your site.
3. The search impact report shows how your CTR changes when a SERP entry is accompanied by a +1 recommendation annotation.

All of the reports listed above are available through the +1 Metrics option that’s now present on the left navigation of the Google Webmaster Tools.

New Social Reports in Google Analytics

Google Analytics, meanwhile, takes a broader approach to the social question. You can implement an updated JavaScript code that tracks a variety of actions across popular social networks. Facebook shares, likes, and unlikes; Twitter tweets; and Google +1s are all trackable with the updated code. To learn how to implement the new social tracking on your website, visit this page.

Beyond seeing stats and figures for social tracking on the whole, users get access to three reports on Analytics:

1. Social Actions gives you a breakdown of the social feedback a page or site has received.
2. Social Engagement lets you see how users who interact socially with your data behave on your site. You can track all standard site behaviors (conversions, time on site, bounce rate, etc.) for the portion of your audience that shared the content.
3. Social Pages lets you examine, at a glance, which pages are getting the most social feedback.

In a world that’s becoming increasingly social on every front, search included, these new tools are an obvious next step for data tracking. Additionally, the official Google Analytics statement indicated, “Social reporting is just getting started,” so pay attention for new advanced in the near future.