Major Contributors: a new intelligence feature in Google Analytics
Google have announced a very useful enhancement to Custom Alerts which provides very valuable information and saves time mining for the data!
If you have a Custom Alert that flags changes in visitor traffic, then Google Analytics will display up to 5 segments that contributed to that traffic change. Google refers to these as Major Contributors.
Google give an example of a Custom Alert that flags a 10% increase in visits. In their example (see graphic above) the alert highlights the following Major Contributors which had an impact on, or were impacted by, the increased traffic:
- a specific landing page (contributed 88% of the increased traffic)
- a specific website (referred 43% of the increased traffic)
- the specific page on the referring site (referred 40% of the increased traffic)
- the exit page (34% of this traffic left via this page)
- the country (53% of these visitors originated here)
This enhancement has significantly increased the value of Custom Alerts, and their ease-of-setup should make this a quick win for any website.
