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utm_custom: a new URL parameter to attach custom data to visitors
One feature that gets requested a lot is to be able to set a variable in the URL that could then be attached to the visitor as custom data. This would be particularly useful for things like email newsletters, so when someone clicks through, they can be identified automatically.
The variable name needed to be generic because of our white label program, and since we pictured this being used with "campaign activity" more than anything else, we decided to call the variable utmcustom (related to Google/Urchin's utmcampaign etc variables).
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SHUT. DOWN. EVERYTHING.
Hmm… did anyone actually read the announcement that Google made today? This isn't "real time Google Analytics", this is a single report in GA that is real time. The rest of GA remains the same. This is more akin to Chartbeat, to be used as a real time compliment to a standard analytics package, rather than a full standalone real time service like Clicky is. But I guarantee you Chartbeat will be just fine, as will everyone else. We've all had, and continue to have, plenty of advantages over GA other than real time data.
If anything, I'm glad Google has done this, as it will bring more awareness to the concept of "real time web analytics" in general. This will inevitably lead to more people searching about it, and we just so happen to have the #1 organic result for this search on both Google and Bing (and hence Yahoo). Everything is going to be just fine!
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Multiple dashboards and custom dashboard modules
Paying members can now create up to 5 unique dashboards for each site, allowing you to have multiple birds-eye views of your analytics — all a click away in the sidebar.
This is especially handy because you now have the ability to create your own dashboard modules. For example, if you want to see both top countries and top cities at the same time, you could create two new boxes, each one having one of these pieces of data. Previously, dashboard modules were categorized, so you could only view countries OR cities, but not both at once. You can add more than one data type to each module too:
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New option to anonymize IP addresses
We just added a new site preference to log IP addresses anonymously, which takes the last octet and changes it to 0. For example, 123.123.123.123 would become 123.123.123.0. And we're not just hiding the last octet from you — we remove it before storing it, so it should comply with laws in places like Germany where it's technically illegal to log the full IP address of a visitor.
This preference is available to all users. You can find it in your site preferences, under "advanced".
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Major updates to alerts, goals, and spy
We've been working on a gigantic update to alerts, goals, and spy, and here it finally is. The most major update is to alerts, so we're pulling that out of the blackhole that is your site preferences and putting it front and center.
So what's new? Here's what the alert setup page looks like now, which should give you a nice overview of everything that's new: