This is part of our series of posts highlighting the new Google Analytics. The new version of Google Analytics is currently available in beta to all Analytics users. And follow Google Analytics on Twitter for the latest updates. This week, a few engineers from our team are sharing improvements they’ve made to Map Overlay reports.

In GA, we're always looking for ways to improve existing reports. For example, we noticed that you can only see state (i.e. province/region) breakdowns if you're looking at the United States. Surely, this information ought to be available for other parts of the world?!

It seemed like something that could be done in a short amount of time and yield a big win for our users. So, we're glad to announce that as of this week's release, you can now see region level maps of over 170 countries!

To try it out, simply go to the Location report (under Visitors > Demographics) and click a country. We'll try France.

Voila! We can see at a glance that Ile-de-France sends the most visits to our site. To see cities, just click "City" in the "Viewing:" list immediately below the map. Once you're on the cities view, you can try out another feature we rolled out recently -- a magnifying glass that appears when cities are clustered closely together.

Enjoy the new features in your maps. We hope they speed you on your way to gaining actionable insights and metrics. Happy analysing!

P.S. Did you know you get map overlay in more places than just the Visitors > Demographics > Location report? Take a look at the tab on the Visitors > Technology > Mobile report

Posted by Eyal, Jerry, Yinnon, and Brian, Google Analytics Frontend Team

The introduction of custom variables to Google Analytics opened up many possibilities in measurement for site owners. It allows you to extend the dimensions tracked by Google Analytics to include facets that are meaningful to your business. For example, wouldn’t you like to know how your logged in members behaved differently to your casual visitors? Or which categories of content your visitors are consuming?

Barbara Pezzi, Director of Analytics and Search Optimisation, Fairmont Raffles Hotels International, has been kind enough to share her use-cases for the different types of custom variables. Head on over to the APAC Conversion Room blog to find out more about:

• Visitor-level custom variables: Swissotel were able to segment their visitors based on membership levels, understand their preferences, and then target their marketing efforts accordingly.
• Session-level custom variables: Fairmont measured which booking method (i.e. single vs multiple) was more popular on their booking engine; and were able to understand which method appealed to which types of customers.
• Page-level custom variables: Swissotel used page-level custom variables to group pages according to the language of the content. With these groupings they were able to conveniently analyse the behaviour patterns and preferences of visitors according to the language of content consumed.

We would also love to hear how you use custom variables. If you have any tips or suggestions, please leave them in the comments of Barbara’s articles.

Posted by Vinoaj Vijeyakumaar, Google Conversion Team

This is part of our series of posts highlighting the new Google Analytics. The new version of Google Analytics is currently available in beta to all Analytics users. And follow Google Analytics on Twitter for the latest updates. This week we’re sharing a few new features in our Intelligence reports.

Since we launched the new Google Analytics, we've been talking to many of you about the new version, and getting your feedback. One question we got was about our goals for the new version and why we made the changes we did. So, we got a few members of the Google Analytics team together to share their stories of how the new version began, our approach, and our goals in building it. Along the way, they also share a bit about what you can expect in the future from Google Analytics.

The Making of Google Analytics v5


We also put together a second video where the team runs through a few of the many new features in Google Analytics v5:

What’s New in Google Analytics v5


You can find more information on many of these in the New Google Analytics blog series including a few that aren’t mentioned in the video like Site Speed and new overview reports. And like Sagnik says at the end of the video, there’s much more to come in Google Analytics. Stay tuned!

Posted by Trevor Claiborne, Google Analytics Team