Although the big news from Google recently is about real-time search, Google Analytics users have not been forgotten about. In fact they get a great holiday season gift – a handful of new customizable features.

Now Google Analytics users can add annotations to dates in order to better document spikes in traffic, use custom variables in advanced segments and view them in custom reports, and even use a super simple analytics tracking code wizard for setting up specialized situations.

Here is an overview of each new feature:

Annotations – Allows you to leave shared or private notes right on the over-time graph. This is useful for company analytics accounts which are being shared among several members of the company. You can learn how to create annotations in the video below.

Custom Variables in Advanced Segments – Allows you to create advanced segmentation based on any key, value or a combination of all custom variables.

Custom Variables in Custom Reports – Allows you to create custom reports with any of the key or value dimensions that are associated with any custom variable.

New Analytics Tracking Code Setup Wizard – automatically generates appropriate tracking code based on the setup options you specify.

New Google Analytics API – Google will announce more about this new feature in the coming days, but it will include support for advanced segmentation.

If you would like to learn more about these new features, then check out Google’s official announcement here.

Do you think these new features will be useful for tracking your website data through Google Analytics? Feel free to share your thoughts below.

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