Please see this Product Bulletin for a listing of all the UI changes to YWA made in this 10.2.1 release.

We have made some changes to YWA’s reporting interface in this release, including a new way to apply Filters and Segments:

The Segmentation Wizard UI has been improved and we’ve added new segment types along with a wider variety of audience dimensions and metric parameters:

We’ve also included a audience definition segment feature that enables you to export user defined segments from YWA to the Right Media Exchange (RMX) where they can be used to target those user-defined groups.  So now you’ll find an option to link your RMX account to YWA via the Ad Channel Configuration tool:

These are just a few of the changes we have made in this release, please see our 10.1 product bulletin to review the full list.

We hope you enjoy the enhancements and new functionality that YWA 10.1 brings to the table.  Please give us you feedback in the comments or contact our support team if you encounter any issues with this release.

Yahoo! Web Analytics does have the ability to collect a remarkable amount of data, and a massive number of values in relation to your website.  It imposes far less restrictions than many other similar web analytics solutions.  Not only this, but the data collected historically is available for reporting today.  YWA gives access to an unrestricted calendar, capable of reporting on any reasonable time period, from whenever a given project started tracking.

However, a large amount of unique values may not actually help YWA users find the insights, identify the segments and analyze the traffic patterns, in order to improve the scope and optimize the reach of digital marketing or publishing.  Adding a large number of unique values may only confuse and obscure identification of the characteristics of a user base, how they interact with the content and how successfully marketing processes are generating conversions and revenue.

Some users of YWA may find that the default values for Page Title don’t provide enough detail, and that the ‘setDocumentGroup’ and ‘setDocumentName’ variables can be used in order to further categorize and order the content.

YWATracker.setDocumentGroup(“Pictures”);

YWATracker.setDocumentName(“Pictures of Lake Balaton”);

Similarly, there may also a point where the default URLs, as collected by YWA, are providing too much data, which is ineffective, and doesn’t add value to reports.  Both report users and YWA have a role to play in data hygiene, and ensuring that the power of Yahoo! Web Analytics is available to users and is based on relevant data.

An example of user-focused data hygiene may be the use of the ‘setUrl’ variable, to manage what may be a an unwieldy and complex URL, including session parameters and other chunks of data which would be useless from an insights perspective.

For example, a URL could be collected by default as:

http://mysite.com?cmp=eread&sid=47633FSR&id=37373625&gid=eururuhsksk

Using setUrl this can be truncated to the most useful parts of the URL:

YWATracker.setUrl(“http://mysite.com?cmp=eread“);

Another example of user-based data hygiene might be managing the use of custom fields, extracting the required values from the URL or the web page itself, so that only the most relevant segments of these variables are stored within the YWA database.

YWA’s role in this process of data hygiene is twofold.  YWA offers the chance to use string- or number-type custom fields, and pre-defined variables, to avoid flooding your reports with unique yet worthless strings.  We have also defined the scope in which this data cleansing can occur, in developing the ‘Limited String Processor,’ which protects accounts from being flooded by unique values, and ensures the fast and reliable operation of our system.  The LSP actively monitors the number of daily unique strings in the user’s YWA project. If the limits are not reached then users do not notice a difference.  But if the limits are exceeded, users may see ‘{Deleted}’ listed in their report groupings, aggregating the affected values. This can be regarded as a call to action, to start cleaning the data being passed to YWA.

We also offer the ability to use URL Rewriting, where users can specify which URL parameters to drop. String patterns in a URL can therefore be easily excluded from the YWA database.

Giving some attention to these issues of data hygiene – and then making the necessary adjustments to YWA settings and data collection – can often be seen as a necessary part of identifying and demarcating the real insights that can be extracted from the use of web analytics.  YWA is a tool which can be used to discover valuable insights.  As we all know, it generally needs valuable data in order to achieve this.

In Summary: The YWA Limited String Processor

• The Page URL field has a limit of 100,000 (one hundred thousand) unique strings in one day.
• String-based custom fields have an extended limit of 500,000 (five hundred thousand) unique strings in one day.
• Member ID, Document Name (Page Title), Product ID, Search Phrases, Order ID, Search Listings, Referrer Domain have an extended limit of 1,000,000 (one million) unique strings per day.

How did you come to be the Product Manager for Yahoo! Web Analytics?

I’ve worked across Yahoo!’s data solutions during the past 3 years, covering data pipelines, warehousing, targeting and content recommendations, as well as analytical business intelligence.  This has given me a broad view into the markets and capabilities that drive the needs of our advertising customers and publishing partners.  Yahoo! Web Analytics is a natural fit in a number of those cases, leading me early this year to take on responsibility for guiding product strategy.

What do you think of Yahoo! Web Analytics?

We are fortunate to have a product with the right balance between structured insights and flexible but approachable data architecture that solves varied and unique needs.  We are able to deliver e-commerce analytics that informs thousands of merchants to get the most out of their Yahoo! Small Business virtual storefronts while at the same time supporting Yahoo! search and display advertisers to understand how to improve their ROI through sophisticated cross channel marketing.

What do you hope to achieve with Yahoo! Web Analytics?

Measured success.  I hope to achieve an increased rate of growth in the revenue our Small Business Merchant services demonstrate for those who take advantage of the turn key analytics.  I hope to achieve a higher rate of ROI for Yahoo! advertisers who can take advantage of our free solution to understand the most effective approach to full funnel, cross media and website engagement.  And I hope to deliver increases in engagement and profitability for our publishing partners by helping them understand and focus their most engaging content and most important audiences advertisers want to reach.

Where do you expect Yahoo! Web Analytics to be in 3 years?

I expect Yahoo! Web Analytics to be at the center of educating our customers how to get the most value out of the leading advertising solutions from Yahoo! that span search and display without having to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars from 3rd party solutions.  I equally expect it to be central to the engagement and monetization of our offerings to publishing partners when they participate in the Yahoo! Publisher Network.  Lastly, I expect it to be central to how both advertisers and publishers understand and engage their audiences across the Yahoo! Network and beyond on our ad exchanges.

Why not make Yahoo! Web Analytics freely available like Google Analytics?  What’s the strategy behind that decision?

I’m constantly impressed at Google’s commitment to deliver on the promise of universal accessibility of web and campaign analytics to businesses large and small.  Serving such a long tail of search marketers, I’m sure it has been incredibly insightful in improving the search experience for users and the search marketing experience for advertisers by making it available to everyone.  Our goals for Yahoo! Web Analytics are a little different.  As a company Yahoo! does a lot of our business with large advertisers and publishers.  Together with our services for small businesses, these are the core vertical and horizontal segments we try to focus on to add unique value instead of simply competing directly with Google to offer the same general feature set to the long tail.

How do you make decisions on product direction with Yahoo! Web Analytics?

I look for the highest value capabilities I think large percentages of Yahoo! customers can take advantage of and that fit with the services and solutions Yahoo! offers to its customers and partners.  The ideal situation in when we find opportunities even the most diverse ranges of customers can all appreciate but when there are compelling solutions we can uniquely provide in specific parts of the world or to specific markets, we are prepared to focus deeper as needed.

How important is Yahoo! Web Analytics to Yahoo!?

Yahoo! Web Analytics is an ongoing area of investment for Yahoo!.  Unlike other enterprise analytics solutions from 3rd party vendors, we are not in the business of selling analytics, so the product’s value is only as strong as our ability to help deliver  a solution that adds value to the adverting and publishing solutions Yahoo! is uniquely capable of providing.

How will the Microsoft transition affect Yahoo! Web Analytics?

The Microsoft transition is a large effort for Yahoo! with many moving parts.  Fortunately, Yahoo! Web Analytics is well positioned to continue to support Search Marketers as integration with Microsoft adCenter has been in place for some time.  We will continue to ensure the campaigns you book in Microsoft are accessible to illustrating how cross media campaigns and full funnel analytics drives engagement and marketing ROI.  At the same time, the audience insights Yahoo! understands based on what Yahoo! users search for and how that connects to the rest of our consumer offering remains a unique source for Yahoo! Web Analytics to highlight.

We’ve just released Version 9.6 of Yahoo! Web Analytics – what do you think are the most significant changes?

The most significant change is the introduction of the assist metric.  We see many examples in the industry of convergence on campaign attribution going beyond first/last click.  The assist metric reveals which campaigns (of any type) most often indirectly contribute to the conversions you value in order to better evaluate marketing opportunities.  We feel that a combination of tracking campaigns by any media source combine with assists will tell a more complete story about how your marketing is working together and where to focus your money to drive the highest ROI.

What about future development – are there any plans you can share?

As a matter of policy, we won’t be commenting externally on future development plans.  But we are interested in hearing more from users of YWA about what they’d like to see in the product down the road.

So, what’s new?

We’ve made significant architectural changes to the system in order to improve overall performance and scalability.  As a result, we’ve introduced some data collection limitations which can be mitigated using URL Rewrite – for further information, follow this link.

We’ve also introduced new Campaign by Type reports.  In addition to the standard Campaign Summary report Yahoo! Web Analytics will introduce five Type reports:

• Paid Search

• Display

• Email

• Affiliate

• Other

What’s improved?

• More consistent terminology across reports and wizards

• Simplified invitation process

• New metrics:

Assists: Assists are a score, not the actual number of times the campaign assisted; they represent a weighted sum of the number of times a keyword or ad contributed to a conversion that was credited to another keyword or marketing activity, where the weights fall off with time.

Days to Conversion: the total number of days from the date of the first visit until a given type of action occurs

Average Days to Conversion: the average number of days from the date of the first visit until a given type of action occurs

For further information on these changes and more, please see this Product Bulletin.

What do I have to do?

We’ve introduced some hard-coded campaign categorization for overall reporting clarity going forward.  This means that if you are currently using campaign categorization, you will need to migrate your current categories to the required position.  This can be done under Settings/Manage Campaign Categories in your Yahoo! Web Analytics account.

Please see here or see section 4.7.3 (Managing Campaign Categories) of our revised User Guide for further information and examples of migration.

Our Quick Install Guide contains some basic information for the newer Yahoo! Web Analytics user so that you can get up and running as soon as possible. Questions answered include:

• Where do I actually get my tracking code?
• Where do I put the tracking code?
• How do I check the tracking code?

You’ll also find some interesting information on how the tracking code works and what are the best steps for quickly checking how well your code is working.

Our Custom Fields Guide will give you lots of great information on YWA custom fields and how you can use them from set-up to reporting. We cover what they are, provide some use cases and illustrate the scopes and carry-over options.

If you’re using custom fields or you’ve been in a quandary about how to use them – you need to read this guide!

If you have suggestions for other Quick Reference Guides like these, please do let us know.

YWA uses Yahoo! IDs (YIDs) to authenticate account logins and this YID is the same one that can be used across all of Yahoo!’s products and properties. So if you have a Yahoo! Mail account then you already have a YID that will allow access to any YWA account you have been invited to join. Yahoo! uses YIDs for the convenience and security of its customers and we call this feature Single Sign-On (SSO) because it requires our customers to only remember one username and password.

The YWA invitation process begins with an administrator (main owner) of the account sending an invitation to whomever they would like to have access to the account. This invite can be sent to ANY email address, it is only later in the process that invitee will need to choose a YID that they will use to login to the account.

Once an administrator is logged into YWA, they will need to navigate to:

Settings –> Users & Roles -> Create and modify users and set their access rights

Once there, you will click on Invite Others to Access this Account to begin the invitation process. You will then be taken to a form where you enter the invitee’s email address and name. You will also be prompted to enter your name and will be given the option to modify the text of the invite. Once submitted you will be taken to this confirmation screen:

At this point you can revise the access rights offered to one of the four options listed. You can also revoke the invitation, in case you change your mind about granting access to the user:

YWA Access Levels

Administrator – has unrestricted access to reporting, account and user management features.

Power user – has unrestricted access to reporting, account and user management features, except for editing or deleting Administrators.

User – has unrestricted access to reporting, but they do not have access to account management or user management features.

Restricted User – has access to select reports and dashboards as configured below. Restricted Users have no access to account or user management features.

Once the invitation is sent out, the recipient will have to accept the invitation by clicking on the link embedded in the email. This will take them to a page where they can enter their existing Yahoo! ID or create a new one:

As mentioned before, a YID is required to access the analytics account. The benefit of using one’s own individual YID (instead of sharing a single YID among multiple users) is increased security and accountability while also allowing for refined access management to the reporting interface.

Lastly, if at any point you would like to delete a user, navigate to:

Settings –> Users & Roles -> Create and modify users and set their access rights

Next to the desired user, click the ‘trash can’ icon:

In a nutshell, the overall invitation process can be summarized into two simple steps:

• Step 1: An administrator sends an email invitation from Yahoo! Web Analytics to anyone they want to grant access to.
• Step 2: Following the link in the email, the invitee signs into analytics using their Yahoo! ID, if they do not have a YID, they will have to create one.