Story by
Brad McCarty
A music and tech junkie who calls Nashville home, Brad is the Director TNW Academy. You can follow him on Twitter @BradMcCarty. A music and tech junkie who calls Nashville home, Brad is the Director TNW Academy. You can follow him on Twitter @BradMcCarty.
If you’ve been wondering whether or not Google’s +1 button has any effect on your website traffic, you’ve been a bit in the dark until now. Starting today, Google Webmaster Tools will let you see different reports to show you exactly what power that little button holds.
According to a post on the Google Analytics Blog, there are additions to three reports and here’s what we need to know:
- Search Impact report: Will show changes to clickthrough rates based on +1 recommendations
- Activity report: Shows how many +1’s your pages have had
- Audience report: Geographic and demographic information for those who have +1’d your pagees
What’s probably more exciting than the +1 tools, though, is the addition of a Social Plugin tracker for Google Analytics. Now you’ll be able to see what pages have been Tweeted, Sent, Liked and +1’d, all with just a few lines of JavaScript required on your part.
The features might not show up for you just yet, but Google says that they should soon:
Over the next few days (and if you’re using the default version of the latest Google Analytics tracking code), if you’ve added +1 buttons to your site we’ll automatically enable Social Plugin Tracking for +1 in your account. You can enable tracking for other social plugins in just a few simple steps.
It’s invaluable information for site owners, so we look forward to seeing that engagement data starting to flow.