This morning I received a mail from Google about a new service called “Benchmarking.” What made me skeptic was the words “data sharing.” So logically I checked the FAQ. This is something that is interesting to read. It says ” You can decide if you want to share your Google Analytics data with Google, and also have full control over how you share it with us. Visit the Edit Account and Data Sharing Settings page from within your account to opt in to sharing your data “With Google products only” or “Anonymously with Google products and the benchmarking service.”
Why does your website needs benchmarking. This is good in case you are using Adsense or Adwords. Google writes ” Many customers have requested benchmarking and conversion-based advertising features. If you wish to help improve our services and take advantage of these enhanced features once we release them, select the corresponding data sharing settings.” On Google Adwords there is a feature called Conversion Optimizer, which is an optional feature within AdWords. This feature When enabled, Conversion Optimizer can automatically adjust your bids to maximize conversions at the minimum price. This feature relies on a site’s conversion data to operate, and is already available to AdWords Conversion Tracking users.
Since the data sharing will be “Anonymous”, there should be no hesitation unless you have stuff to hide. I don’t mind sharing data openly “via” Google products if it helps me to earn $. What will you get out of benchmarking?
Here is the catch though, if you do not share it , then Google will not allow you to use “benchmarking services.” Say, if you don’t use Google Analytics and still want to advertise in Google products, what would be the solution? Another issue is that benchmarking will be enabled for all profiles in your account. Since the selection is at the account level, you cannot enable individual profiles while enabling others.
Fundamental benefits of Google Benchmarking” that can give Alexa a run for its money is that “you are able to compare your site’s Visits, Pageviews, Pages per Visit, Bounce Rate, Average Time on Site, and New Visits data against benchmark data from categories of other participating websites. You can use this data to gain broader context for your site so you can identify additional opportunities to improve your site’s metrics.”
This can change how net advertising will work in few years time. There is absolutely no competition other than Alexa or even Technorati.
This service is located under the “Visitors” section of your reports. Select “Benchmarking (Beta)” to view this report. Please note that it will take up to two weeks for the data to appear since it is being categorized and collected for your reports. You can choose the vertical to be compared with in the same section. I did not find the categories that can be selected quite deep enough. I found the reason later, Google FAQ writes “Benchmarking data is also affected by the number of sites that opt in to the service over time. As more sites participate, a wider variety of categories is available for you to compare your site against.”
There is one more term you should know “sites of similar size.” You will find it in reports. Google FAQ says” Based on the number of visits each site receives, sites of similar sizes are grouped together under three classifications: small, medium, and large. This way, you can compare yourself to other similarly sized sites. You are not able to view benchmarking data for sites in other size classifications.”
So what is the refresh rate? Google is bot vague here “We regularly adjust the benchmarking data to help ensure that it is representative of participating sites and relevant for its users. Some of the factors we take into account when we reclassify the data are changes in the site’s content and number of visits. We group sites with other similarly sized and categorized sites, so we check the latest number of visitors for each site to adjust the benchmarking data accordingly.”
If you are geniunly interested in developing industry benchmarks for advertising, you should opt for it. Then we will have good Competition with Alexa and Technorati.
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