What do you do when a favorite feature on a web app you use just doesn't work anymore? I generally ask myself, "Is it me?" I try to use the feature on different browsers. I reflect on what I've installed recently on my computer. I peer suspiciously at my ever-growing list of Firefox add-ons. Then I usually decide, "Well, it's probably their fault. They'll fix it sooner or later."
They usually do fix it, too...sooner or later. In the case of the site overlay feature on Google Analytics, the fix came in later rather than sooner for me. I can't tell you when I noticed that something was awry with the overlay, but it's not been working for me for several weeks at least. If you don't use Google Analytics, you may not know what the site overlay does -- it essentially gives you a picture of your web site which shows what links your visitors are clicking. In the case of this blog, my users tend to recoil in horror from it soon after they visit, closing their browser windows without clicking anything. I guess I should have taken web design a bit more seriously... The site overlay can be quite useful for a webmaster who wants to understand what links his or her visitors are really noticing and clicking on; it's a fantastic tool both for letting you know what is working at the moment and also for helping you decide how you should link out in the future. Is everyone ignoring your affiliate links in your sidebar? Well, maybe it's time to start including a few within your blog posts. Anyway, you can imagine how distressed I was at not being able to see which of my links my visitors weren't clicking on. Whenever I'd open the site overlay, I'd see the usual overlay transparency over my site but no click data whatsoever would be displayed.
It seems that I'm not the only person who has had problems with this feature of late, but I get the distinct feeling that not everyone was affected. To tell you the truth, I think the reason it wasn't working was my fault based on what I've been reading online. Strangely enough, though, my laziness seems to have paid off because the overlay feature started working again without me having to do anything. That's really what I want to have happen; I don't want to have to complain about bugs that might actually be caused by me...I just want everything to work again. Kudos to the Analytics team for doing the work and sparing me from having to do anything.
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