Google Unveils Universal Analytics

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In 2007, Google introduced Universal Search, a way to search across all of its content sources at once. Five years later, the company is doing the same for business data.

Google on Monday announced Universal Analytics, an expansion of Google Analytics that allows large companies to submit their own marketing data to Google Analytics to gain a better understanding of how their customers interact with their products and services.

Google Analytics is designed to provide useful information about how online visitors interact with a website. Universal Analytics aims to extend that view to smartphones, tablets, game consoles, and digital appliances. It also allows the importation of data from offline sources such as marketing campaigns, sales calls, call center logs and store visits.

"Measurement today is evolving from technology that counts site traffic into a broader system that measures your effectiveness in advertising, sales, product usage, support, and retention," said Manav Mishra, group product manager for Google Analytics, in a blog post. "Ultimately, this sort of integrated measurement can help you deliver the best service, products, and experiences for your customers."

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Universal Analytics, currently in limited beta testing for companies that sign up through Google's website, relies on a new API, the Measurement Protocol. The API allows developers to send raw user interaction data to Google Analytics using HTTP requests. The data can then be measured and correlated to other data sets, such as data from Google Analytics Mobile App Analytics, which just entered open beta last week.

Universal Analytics reduces the amount of data stored in first-party cookie files, a change that might mitigate potential privacy risks associated with browser cookies. Instead of cookies, Universal Analytics relies on a Javascript library called analytics.js, which uses an anonymous identifier made up of two randomly generated 32-bit numbers. Use of a server-side identifier, however, has its own privacy implications. Google notes that deleting cookies for a website no longer ensures that a subsequent visit to that website will be considered a new visit. To avoid being tracked by Google Analytics, users are advised to install a browser opt-out add-on.