Google Analytics Version 2 launched yesterday and the changes are dramatic. Eric Skogen, space150 Creative Tech, speaks for us all when he says of the new version, “I am freaking out! It’s an infographics dream and that interface is GORGEOUS.”

Here are some of the new features we love at space150:

Date Selector

The new date selector was the first improvement we noticed that will help make Google Analytics more usable. It is now really easy to compare date ranges against each other for easier seasonal analysis.

And the addition of the timeline feature means you can quickly get a long-term view of the data without loading a full report. The benefit is that you automatically see big changes as they occur. As you can see in the screenshot below, the timeline alone leads you to question what caused the traffic spike in mid-April.

Streamlined Report Menus

In the previous version of Google Analytics, all reports were categorized as either Marketing Optimization or Content Optimization. Under each of those were 4–5 more categories of weird names before you finally get to the reports. Basically you had to be an expert just to figure out what the categories were, let alone figure out which report you needed.

The new reports are stored under easily understood categories. If you want to know how many visitors are coming to a site, it is immediately obvious that you’d want to click on the Visitors category. If you want to know where those visitors are coming from, just click Traffic Sources.

There are so many new features in Google Analytics that we can’t begin to cover them all. So here are the best links we’ve read that go into more depth:

• Google Analytics Blog: New Version of Google Analytics!
• Analytics Talk: Welcome to the New Google Analytics
• Occam’s Razor: Google Analytics Is Re-Launched: Do These Five Things First In V2