New Google Analytics Social Reports

This morning Google announced the next step in their social media strategy: three new social media reports surrounding social value. These three include the social value report, the social sources report and -perhaps most exciting – the social plugins report.

The Conversions Report

While previously you might be able to set an advanced segment, check sources and list conversion from there, this new report makes it as easy as the click of a button. Now you can see what goals are converting with assistance from social channels.

Social Sources

While this one seems a little lackluster at first (you could see aggregate traffic with advanced segments after all), however it also provides the ability to see social visitor flow, which may end up being an incredibly useful feature.

Social Plugins

This is the meat and bones of this set, giving you a summary of off-page social actions. This gives you an idea of what kind of content is popular across social groups. You can see what was shared, where, how, and comments.  Basically, this is the social report everyone was waiting for.

The only question is how useful this is when Facebook and Twitter, two of the largest social media sites, aren’t social data hub members. Not to mention that I think we’re going to notice huge discrepancies between social media networks. Still, it should lead to some amazing data analysis opportunities.