Google Analytics: Annotations

At the end of an online campaign or for month-end reporting, I bet you've wondered where all the traffic spikes should be attributed to. Rather than shuffle through piles of paper lurking about, Google Analytics makes it easy to keep track of what happened by allowing users to add data point notes (annotations) to one's traffic feed. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a way for marketers to download or export just a timeline of the annotations. Maybe someone will write an API to compensate for this undersight.

TheFoodening blog - a bump in referral traffic from a niche food site

The above image shows a steep bump in new visitors and is an example of a cross-posted recipe that I did (pizza balls) between my food blog and a popular food community on LiveJournal, food_porn. It doesn't have to be a direct post to gain residual traffic among an audience with similar interests. I still get long-tail hits from recipes x-posted years ago.