+1 reporting in Google Webmaster Tools and Google Analytics

Tuesday, June 28, 2011

It’s been a busy week for us here at the Googleplex. First we released
+1 buttons to Google search sites globally,
then we announced the beginning of
the Google+ project.

The +1 button and the Google+ project are both about making it easier to
connect with the people you trust online.
For the +1 button, that means bringing advice from trusted friends and contacts right into Google
search, letting the users who love your web content recommend it at the moment of decision.

But when you’re managing a website, it’s usually not real until you can measure it. So we’re happy
to say we’ve got one more announcement to make—today we’re releasing reports that show you
the value +1 buttons bring to your site.

First, +1 metrics in
Google Webmaster Tools
can show you how the +1 button affects the traffic coming to your pages:

• The
  Search Impact report
  gives you an idea of how +1’s affect your organic search traffic. You can find out if your
  clickthrough rate changes when personalized recommendations help your content stand out. Do this
  by comparing clicks and impressions on search results with and without +1 annotations. We’ll
  only show statistics on clickthrough rate changes when you have enough impressions for a
  meaningful comparison.
• The
  Activity report
  shows you how many times your pages have been +1’d, from buttons both on your site and on other
  pages (such as Google search).
• Finally, the
  Audience report
  shows you aggregate geographic and demographic information about the Google users who’ve +1’d
  your pages. To protect privacy, we’ll only show audience information when a significant number
  of users have +1’d pages from your site.

Use the +1 Metrics menu on the side of the page to view your reports. If you haven’t yet verified
your site on Google Webmaster Tools, you can
follow these instructions
to get access.

Finally, you can also see how users share your content using other buttons besides +1 by using
Social Plugin Analytics in Google Analytics.
Once you configure the JavaScript for Analytics, the Social Engagement reports help you compare
the various types of sharing actions that occur on your pages.

• The Social Engagement report lets you see how site behavior changes for visits that
  include clicks on +1 buttons or other social actions. This allows you to determine, for example,
  whether people who +1 your pages during a visit are likely to spend more time on your site than
  people who don’t.
• The Social Actions report lets you track the number of social actions (+1 clicks, Tweets,
  etc) taken on your site, all in one place.
• The Social Pages report allows you to compare the pages on your site to see which are
  driving the highest the number of social actions.

If you’re using the default version of the latest Google Analytics tracking code, when you
add +1 buttons to your site,
we automatically enable Social Plugin Analytics for +1 in your account. You can
enable analytics for other social plugins
in just a few simple steps.

Social reporting is just getting started. As people continue to find new ways to interact across
the web, we look forward to new reports that help business owners understand the value that social
actions are providing to their business. So +1 to data!

Written by Dan Rodney, Software Engineer