How To Track Google +1 And Other Social Buttons In Webmaster Tools

Google have announced that Google +1 data will now be integrated into Google Webmaster Tools. What makes this new feature so valuable is that data will be available for the LIKE, Tweet and other social buttons on your web page as well. This is great news for webmasters wanting to know the value of adding social buttons to their web pages.

There are basically two sections you can look at: How it affects traffic to your website and the social sharing interactions on your web page via Social Plugin Tracking.

How it affects your website traffic

1. The Search Impact report: Helps you see how +1‘s affect your organic search traffic.

Google software engineer Dan Rodney explains, “You can find out if your clickthrough rate changes when personalized recommendations help your content stand out..do this by comparing clicks and impressions on search results with and without +1 annotations. We’ll only show statistics on clickthrough rate changes when you have enough impressions for a meaningful comparison.”

2. The Activity report: Shows how many times your pages have been +1’d

3. The Audience report: Provides geographic and demographic info about the people who’ve +1’d your pages.

Social Plugin Tracking in Google Analytics

You will be able to analyze the social sharing actions on your website i.e. number of tweets, LIKES and so on through 3 reports:

1. The Social Engagement report: View how user behavior changes for pages that have social sharing buttons. As an example, you can see whether people who +1 your site spend more time browsing your site than those who do not click the button. +1 is added automatically. However, to add other buttons to track, you need to integrate Google Analytics tracking with each network button. You can add social tracking for other buttons here.

2. The Social Actions report: View how many social actions are happening on your site from one interface.

3. The Social Pages report: Compare pages on your site to see what content has the highest number of social actions so help you decide what kind of content you should be focusing on.

Rodney further explains, “Over the next few days (and if you’re using the default version of the latest Google Analytics tracking code), if you’ve added +1 buttons to your site we’ll automatically enable Social Plugin Tracking for +1 in your account,”.

While I have had my doubts over Google’s social marketing effort, I applaud them for not limiting this feature to their own button. This is a great addition to Webmaster Tools looking to monitor the effects of all social buttons from one interface.

To learn more about Webmaster Tools and how it can help grow your business, click here.