a very nice improvement to make web analytics useful. that is, if you use a competent analytics package.

We have a very long tail of data in web analytics. 10s of 1000s of rows of keywords in the Search Report (even for this small blog!). 100s and 100s of referring urls and campaigns and page names and so on and so forth. Yet because we are humans we tend to look at just the top 10 or 20 rows to try and find insights. The problem? The top 10 of anything rarely changes (except in rare circumstances like a sale or on a pure content – think news – site). Hence I have persistently evangelized the need for true Analysis Ninjas to move beyond the top 10 rows of data to find insights.