The new Social Reports in Google Analytics compile and analyze social activity data from more than 400 social services, with advanced tracking of their Social Data Hub partner sites. See which sites are in, and which have opted out, to date.
Google announced their new Social Reports in Analytics features today at SES New York and users should be happy to see they are already tracking activity across more than 400 social sites. In addition, 21 sites have signed on as partners within Google’s Social Data Hub, allowing Google to share the sites’ activities stream within Analytics.
Integrating with Google Analytics through their Social Data Hub requires that a social site is legally able to share their data. This presents obvious issues for some, like Facebook. Still, the information posted to Facebook Brand Pages is generally public so while they are not a part of the program, they are one of the sites being tracked.
So which companies are participating in the hub and offering up more detailed information via an integrated activity stream for Google Analytics users?
Google requires a specific information set by way of an Atom/RSS Activity Feed of global activities from each network in order to offer some consistency and a complete set of results for users. Social networks are expected to provide information on the type of event (ie.: post, like, comment), meta data such as geolocation or follower count, and more.
Here are just a few of the over 400 social sites Google is tracking for social reports within Google Analytics:
As we shared in our announcement of the new social reports, if Google can crawl it on the public web, they can show it. If users are sharing something within a private circle on Google+ or privately on Facebook or other networks, those activities won’t show.