How to Gain Insights from the Google Analytics Widget

Learn how to combine Google Analytics and Meltwater to get insights on referral sessions from media results

Whitney W. avatar
Written by Whitney W.
Updated over a week ago

Welcome to our overview of the integration of Google Analytics into Meltwater via the Google Analytics Widget! The article below will cover the following:


What does Meltwater's Google Analytics widget do?

The Google Analytics Widget will help you understand how your PR efforts are driving traffic to your company website.

The Google Analytics widget displays the page views and referred sessions to a selected website against the media exposure for a news or social search for up to 90 days. You can observe any correlations between the media exposure (for press releases, blog posts, social media campaigns, etc.) and the traffic leading to your website.

For example, running a social media campaign to increase traffic to the company blog can be measured by looking at social media exposure compared to an increase in page views.

Ultimately, this will show you the success of your campaigns to bring traffic to your websites and may uncover interesting trends between brand exposure and web traffic.


Setting up the Widget (Authentication)

Similar to Instagram on the Premium Social Package, you must authenticate your Google Analytics credentials before obtaining any data from the widget itself.

  1. Go to Account, Select Third party integrations (direct link here)

  2. Under Google Analytics API, select Connect

  3. Select the Google Account that you have Analytics access to. You will be asked to provide Meltwater with access to your Google Analytics Account, please select Allow.

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4. Once authenticated, your Google Analytics account will be displayed on the settings page like this:

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5. Now that Google Analytics is connected, go to Analyze from the left side navigation bar and select your existing dashboard to add the widget to.

When adding the Google Analytics Widget, select 'Google Analytics Source' to choose one of your Google Analytic's Properties. For further details on Properties, please review this information page from Google Analytics.

6. Select Inputs to choose one of your news monitoring searches.

Tip: Select 'Labels' to include data labels on each point on your graphs.

7. Select Update to save your completed widget


Interpreting the Widget

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The image above displays how the Google Analytics Widget is displayed in the max view. The media exposure, or the number of articles, for your search, are displayed by the gold line graph with the scale on the left side.

The "Referral Sessions", representing the total linked sessions, for the website you set under "Property" in the widget settings, are displayed as a bar graph. When you scroll down to view the articles beneath this graph, you can view the "Referral Sessions" based off of specific documents in your content stream next to the reach numbers.

The darker portion of the bar graph named "Earned Referral Sessions" represents the number of referred sessions coming from articles that are in the search, tag, etc. that you set as the widget input.

You can add All Sessions using the widget settings and they will be displayed as "Other Sessions" in the graph. The blue scale on the right is for the sessions and referral sessions. This is a count of all sessions (of any type) for the website other than the Referred or Earned Referral Sessions.

Note: When selecting a specific date on the chart, the list of articles will only show the articles that have earned referral sessions.


Troubleshooting

If no Google Analytics data is appearing, even though you've authenticated, it may mean that you do not have access to your company's Google Analytics account. If this is the case, you will have to talk to your company's admin to be granted access. If you DO have access to your company's Google Analytics account and the above message is seen, please reach out to us via live chat and we can help you get this set up.

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Data & Security

Meltwater is bound to the Google Analytics Terms of Services. Specifically, section 5, which states:

  1. Confidentiality.

Neither party will use or disclose the other party's Confidential Information without the other's prior written consent except for the purpose of performing its obligations under this Agreement or if required by law, regulation or court order; in which case, the party being compelled to disclose Confidential Information will give the other party as much notice as is reasonably practicable prior to disclosing the Confidential Information.

Also, the Google Analytics widget does not store any of your traffic data. All GA data we visualize is provided directly from Google via their API.


💡 Tip

Need more help? Feel free to reach out to us via Live Chat or check out our Customer Community.

Find answers and get help from Meltwater Support and Community Experts.


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