• PPC Hero, Thursday, April 10, 2008 1:45 PM

Google rolled out a beta version of a new Benchmarking feature for Analytics users a few weeks ago, and Amber Benedict discusses how it's been working for her.

Once Google Analytics users opt-in to share their data, the Benchmarking tool gets to work on comparing their sites' metrics to others that fit the same characteristics. Initially, the feature compares a site to others that are the same size, but users can manually refine their comparisons on a category level. The problem is that the categories aren't granular enough to provide an accurate estimate of where a site really is in terms of the competition.

In Benedict's example, she found that the average number of visitors to the test site was 900% higher than the industry standard. In fact, all of the sites she tested showed better than average performance. "Yes, you can select a category to compare your site metrics to, but the category just doesn't seem to be specific enough to my sites," she says. "Therefore, I don't feel I'm truly getting a real estimate of where I stand among competitors and identical sites."

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