Google Analytics Benchmarking Newsletter <----
 

1. Introduction

Welcome to the first volume of the Analytics Benchmarking Newsletter!

This month, we are replacing the standard "benchmarking" report in your Google Analytics account with data shared in this newsletter. We are using this newsletter as an experiment to surface more useful or interesting data to Analytics users. Data contained here comes from all websites which have opted-in anonymous data sharing with Google Analytics. Only those website administrators which have enabled this anonymous data sharing will receive this "benchmarking" newsletter.

You may be wondering, how many websites are in this "anonymous data sharing" pool? Currently, hundreds of thousands, and we've endeavored to make all of the metrics here statistically significant.

The date range of comparison for this newsletter is from November 1, 2010 - February 1, 2011. Comparison is done with data from November 1, 2009 - February 1, 2010. Absolute metrics such as total # visits, pageviews, or conversions for all opted-in websites are not reported.

To simplify the prose, the phrase "websites" will represent "websites which have opted into anonymous data sharing with Google Analytics" for the rest of this newsletter.

2. Site Metrics

Compared to a year ago, websites have seen reduced pages / visit, average time on site, as well as bounce rate.

11/1/09 - 2/1/10 11/1/10 - 2/1/11 Difference
Pages/Visit 4.9 4.5 -0.4
Bounce Rate 48.2% 47.0% -1.2%
Avg Time on Site 5:49 5:23 -0:26
2.1 Breakdown by Geography

Our anonymous database has aggregated geographic breakdown at the country level. Here are a few representative countries and their respective aggregate metrics. The first number in each cell represents the metric for the date range 11/1/10-2/1/11. The parenthesized number is the Year over Year delta compared to a year ago.

Country Pages / Visit Bounce Rate Avg Time on Site
United States 4.7 (-0.1) 42.5% (-6.1%) 6:06 (-0:10)
United Kingdom 4.9 (-0.3) 41.5% (+0.2%) 5:38 (-0.27)
France 4.4 (-0.4) 49.7% (+1.4%) 4:40 (-0:08)
Brazil 4.1 (-0.1) 47.8% (-2.9%) 5:20 (+0:03)
China 4.1 (-0.1) 58.2% (+1.0%) 3:46 (+0:37)
Japan 3.9 (-0.1) 48.6% (-9.0%) 3:47 (-2:59)

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