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Google just keeps on giving more free stuff.  This time they’ve updated analytics to allow you to share your data.  With data sharing, this means you’ll be able to compare your site against similar sites in your industry.  In the future, you’ll also be able to get a lot better information about ad conversions once Google rolls out the Conversion Optimizer.  Here’s an excerpt from the email they sent with instructions on how to set it up on your analytics account.

 To enable this optional new feature, an administrator on your account will need to make the following selections on the Google Analytics data sharing settings page: 

      1. Log into your account.  You’ll see the yellow data sharing settings box on the Analytics Settings page.

      2. Click the “More data sharing options” link within the yellow box.

      3. Select the second checkbox to specify that you want to share your data “Anonymously with Google products and the benchmarking service”.  You can also choose to share your data “With Google products only” to take advantage of advanced Google advertising products and services as they become available.

The industry benchmarking feature is currently in beta. Once you have enabled benchmarking, it may take up to two weeks before the categorized, aggregated and anonymized benchmarking data shows up in your reports.

For more information on the benchmarking service, visit our FAQs: http://www.google.com/support/googleanalytics/bin/topic.py?topic=13909