Last month Google introduced In-Page Analytics designed to provide a visual reference to data already provided in the content reports. Basically it takes Google analytics data and looks at it within the context of the actual webpage.

While it is a nice attempt to make the data more insightful, it’s very important to note that In-Page Analytics does not accurately measure where people are clicking on the screen. Have a look at the screen shot from announcement video on YouTube. I’ve highlighted two dotted bubbles that list 4% traffic being referred by both the product picture and the product name link. This is misleading as the visual cues (the bubbles) seem to imply that In-Page Analytics looks to be tracking click location. In fact that 4% refers to the total percentage of all traffic referred to that product url from this page, and not specifically where on the page the traffic is coming from (i.e. if the clicks are coming from people clicking on the product image or the product name below).

Google admits that “there’s still a lot left to do” on the tool and that at this time, In-Page Analytics cannot distinguish between these two links.  Therefore in the meantime, for detailed analysis of where people are clicking on the screen, tools like Clicktale or CrazyEgg fit the bill.