Spending some more time in Google Analytics has generally been improving my view of the tool, but there are two glaring omissions that would need to be fixed before I could strongly recommend it. Surprisingly, both of these issues have to do with missing links.

The first is referring URLS. Google Analytics has a referring domain report, but the only way to get the full referring URL is to use a rather buried sub-menu "Refering Souce > Analysis Options > Cross Segment Performance >> Content" and even then the referring URL is not a link but rather you’d have to type in the domain and then copy-paste the balance of the URL.

(This workaround was found by JustAddWater.nk who describes it and offers some background and other thoughts.)

Could that be any more frustrating and inconvenient?

The second is inbound search links! Google Analytics has a CPC vs Organic Keyword report which shows keyword that generated inbound traffic by engine, but there appears to be no way to actually click out and see the search engine results page. I commonly do this to see who is ranking above/below and try and get a sense for how to improve ranking on that keyword. With GA it’s necessary to go manually rerun the search, then ‘find’ yourself in the results.

Neither of these functionalities is complex, and I don’t know that I’ve ever seen an analytics package without them. Google Analytics is clearly being enhanced on an ongoing basis – I wonder why these features are left out and where they stand on the ‘to-do’ list?

BTW: ROI Revolution has a great blog with ongoing Google Analytics tips.