MediaVision Blog : Search Engine Marketing

Google has a new Benchmarking feature! At last you can compare your data to that of the rest of your industry, or any other industry for that matter.

You can evaluate data such as number of visits to your site, number of page views, number of pages per visit, bounce rate, average time spent on your site, and new visits.

To obtain this information though, you have to be willing to share your data anonymously. See the message below that would have appeared in your AdWords and/or Analytics accounts.

You can choose to share your data between Google Analytics and other Google services, or just with the other Google services. If you decide not to share your data at all, you will not have access to the benchmarking feature or any of the additional services and features Google is offering for this information.

Your data will be anonymous and Google will aggregate it so no information specific to your site is made available.

The Benchmarking data will probably take a few weeks to accumulate. The more sites that opt in and share their data, the more quickly this will happen.

You can even compare your site to other industries. You may want to see which industries stats improve when your industry’s stats slump and alter business processes accordingly.

If your SEM agency is not willing to opt into this scheme, you should really be questioning their motives. They may be concerned that you will then be able to see that they are not performing as well as they say they are.

This really does appear to be a ‘win- win’ situation. Essentially, Google is providing a free Benchmarking service where your site can remain anonymous, but you reap the benefits of being able to compare yourself to other sites in your industry.