With the new release of ga.js this is possible. In the old days a fired event immediately after a trackPageview would cause Google Analytics to report a 0% bouncerate for that visit. But sometimes you don't want that behavior because the event is not always triggered by the visitor.

For instance: I track page load times the same way Google Analytics does, but in an unsampled way (Google only meausures 10%). To do that I fire an event immediately after the trackPageview, but I do that in another profile with a different UA-XXXX-Y number so it won't affect my bouncerates. But now we have an extra parameter:

_trackEvent(category, action, opt_label, opt_value, opt_noninteraction)

If you set this opt_noninteraction (boolean) to true it wil not affect bouncerates!!! That makes it possible to:
Read more: Google Analytics event tracking not affecting bouncerate? »

I can't believe it. Google just announced a new 'feature' for their search results pages. If a user is logged in he will be redirected to the secure (SSL) version of their search engine. The main reason (so they claim) is the user's privacy... when a user does a search and navigates to a site, that site will only be able to see it's a visitor from Google Organic...yes, without the keyword.

Why does this suck?

• If Google really had a clear focus on a user's privacy they also wouldn't send the keyword along with an AdWords click (as Yoast tweets). Right now only half of the results are privacy-protected and the other (paid) half not.
• Google claims it will not affect a lot of users, that could be right on average. But for some sites a lot of their target groups are logged in to their Google Analytics, Google Reader, Youtube, Gmail, etc. All those visitors will also be logged in on the search results, and that could mean serious loss of information about the used keywords.

Read more: Google starts hiding SEO keywords for privacy, but AdWords unaffected? »

Have you ever launched a multi-variate test with the Visual Website Optimizer. And did you want to review all the variants in the test in all browsers? Or do you want to analyze all the variants another site is testing when you see a VWO test being executed? I bring you the magic With my new VWO-Variant-Switcher© it's easy to view all variants.

How does it work

In the toolbars of all my browsers I have this little button:

When I click on it when I'm on a page that is running a live test this popup shows up:

Read more: Live Visual Website Optimizer variant switcher »

A while ago I wrote an article about a method to track page load times in Google Analytics. Short after this article Google came with their own technique to track page load times, but both methods have some disadvantages.

To give a clear understanding about the differences I want to show you this image:

Read more: Simulate Googles trackPageLoadTime without sampling »

Today I read a great presentation from Joshua Bixby (Strangeloop). He showed a nice way to create a business case for Web Performance Optimization (#wpo). The case is that a slower user experience leads to less revenue, but it's not easy to prove that. What you could do is set up an A/B test with a slower page as B variant. The upside is that you can make a business case, the downside is that you will lose revenue. Joshua came up with another option: we already have the connection speed and browser version in Google Analytics!

The older browsers and slower connection types have a negative impact on page load times. So they should show us numbers for people with a slower user experience.

Read more: And that is why you need to speed up your site! »