Track your Social Signals in Google Analytics and Webmaster tools

It's been a busy couple of weeks for Google, with the launch of their +1 and Google+ set to rival Facebook they are proving to have their finger on the pulse when it comes to becoming more social after appearing to be a little reluctant to jump on the social bandwagon.

Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools have added new tools for tracking the impact of tweets, likes, +1s & more on your website’s traffic.

Google Webmaster Tools now allows you to report on the impact of the +1 Button and how this can affect your click through rate. You can also view the new “Activity Report” within Webmaster Tools which will help you see how many +1’s your site pages have received

A great new tool launched within Google Analytics is the Social Plugin Tracking tools. This not only tracks +1s but other Social Signals such as Twitter tweets, Facebook Likes and Facebook Sends.

Google recently admitted that Social Signals now do play a part in ranking success and this is backed up in a study by SEOmoz’s Rand Fishkin for the new Ranking Factors for 2011 have been revealed with Social Signals play a significant part.

The Social Plugin Tracking allows you to create three reports: Social Engagement, Social Actions and Social Pages.

Social Engagement tracks behaviour changes (time on site, pageviews, bounce rate, etc.) for visits from social plugins.

Social Actions tracks the number of social actions users take on your site,

Social Pages compares your pages on the number of social actions they are receiving.

These new tools offers a greater insight into Social Signals and the impact of such on your website. Especially how Social Signals are driving traffic to your website.

This is invaluable data and means web masters can better devise a social strategy to aid website rankings.