• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, July 18, 2017

Google wants to make it easier for anyone within an organization to have access to the "what" and "why" in analytics data, freeing up analysts to focus on the more strategic questions such as "how."

So engineers at Google integrated into Google Analytics the same natural language-processing technology available across Google products such as Android and Search. This will allow anyone across an organization with access to the platform to speak a question, in plain English, and get an answer.

The idea is to simplify the user interface, allowing others across an organization to have access to the same data simply by verbalizing basic analytics questions to a simple user interface in Google Analytics, similar to the way one person may ask another.

Google calls the technology Analytics Intelligence, and describes it as a set of features in Google Analytics that use machine learning to help marketers better understand and act on the brand's analytics data. Machine-learning capabilities such as automated insights available on the web and the mobile app, smart lists, smart goals, and session quality are also included. 

Analytics Intelligence also now available on the web and in the mobile app, provides data through automated insights that can identify spikes or drops in metrics like revenue or session duration. The data may also show opportunities to improve key metrics by following specific recommendations.

This may offer an opportunity to improve bounce rates by reducing a page's load time, or the potential to boost conversion rates by adding a new keyword to an AdWords campaign, according to Google. And similar to other Google products that use machine learning, the system learns and becomes smarter with use.