The new feature is useful for when you are searching for particular data or keywords displayed in the report but need to find this quickly before using long term solutions such as setting up advanced segmentation.
Google Analytics continues to add and test new features to its free web analytics package but these are often not rolled out immediately as they need to be tested and evaluated. One of the issues with the existing search filter at the bottom of each page is that it is limited and often cannot easily provide more advanced search patterns. This search feature offers the ability to quickly check or search for data captured in a particular report.
This new advanced filter feature does not appear to be available on all accounts but will likely be rolled out as there is some real benefit for better understanding your web analytics data. The search feature is useful for when you are searching for particular data or keywords displayed in the report but need to find this quickly before using long term solutions such as setting up advanced segmentation.
The “advanced filter” is shown at the bottom of certain report pages within Google Analytics replacing the existing search box. The example below shows that you can quickly search for text contained in the page title, but the real benefit is that you can also apply metric filters to this search. The improvement is that you can quickly search for particular pages by setting conditions such as only those with less than 100 pages to filter out highly trafficked pages and also those with low bounce rates. You can add multiple conditions to further refine this on the fly to include conditions such as goal conversion on certain reports.
While these advanced filters are an amazing upgrade to the current search features, the only disappointment is that it doesn’t use the “search as you type” available in advanced segmentation. While this is likely because it works differently it might be a nice touch. So if you cant see these new features in your account yet, stay tuned and keep an eye on the official Google Analytics Blogspot, and we look forward to more cool features such as pivot tables.
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