Google Changes Menu Options, Adds New Reports In Google Analytics

Next time you check Google Analytics, you may see a new navigation menu and have a hard time finding some of your favorite reports.

There’s been no announcement that we’re aware of, but the main menu that several members of our editorial team are seeing in their Google Analytics accounts are quite different. Under the “Standard Reports” heading, we’re seeing these primary sections today:

• Real-Time
• Audience
• Acquisition
• Behavior
• Conversions

I bolded the new options, which previously said “Traffic Sources” and “Content.”

Added: As a couple commenters have pointed out, Google previewed the new Acquisitions report in a blog post last week. The company has also published a new blog post today about the new reports.

It’s not just a renaming of those sections, either. Several reports have been moved, and a couple new reports have been added.

For example, the options under “Traffic Sources” used to be Overview, Sources, Search Engine Optimization, Social, Cost Analysis and Advertising. Now, under the new “Acquisition” section, the reports are

• Overview
• Channels
• All Traffic
• Campaigns
• Keywords
• Cost Analysis
• AdWords
• Social
• Search Engine Optimization

Options under the new “Behavior” section are Overview, Behavior Flow, Site Content, Site Speed, Site Search, Events, AdSense, Experiment and In-Page Analytics.

Two New Reports

The first two bullet items above — Overview and Channels under the Acquisitions heading — are new. The Acquisitions Overview offers a snapshot comparing the behavior of traffic coming from different sources (first screenshot below), while the Channels report is what it sounds like: a detailed data set comparing the different channels that drive traffic (second screenshot below).

The Channels report is similar to the old “Sources” report, but seems to offer more data than I recall seeing under “Sources.”

As I type this, there’s no formal announcement of these changes, so I’m not sure how many Google Analytics users should be able to see the new menu options and reports. Perhaps a blog post detailing these changes (and any others I’m not aware of yet) will be coming soon from the Google Analytics blog.

New Google Analytics Home Page

I should also mention — and you’ve probably already seen — that Google Analytics has a new home page for non-logged-in users. This is what it’s looked like for at least a week or two:

The previous home page was very spartan and primarily existed to make logging in easy. The new page is much heavier on giving a Google Analytics sales pitch, as you can see above.