Google Analytics Intelligence - immediate knowledge of trend shifts

Google Analytics recently added some new features to their service, and one of them in particular is going to prove to be extremely useful: Intelligence reports and alerts.

Here’s Google’s spotlight blog on the new feature:
Google Analytics Blogspot Article

The purpose of the intelligence section is for Google to alert you to unexpected changes. Google highlights items (anything like visits, or people from California, or specific referring sources) and it will show the value that Google expected and what the actual value was (high or low). It even lists a significance meter on each alert.

Additionally, you can create custom alerts so that if something important takes a dip or gets a spike, you can have an email sent to yourself. And best of all, that alert can EASILY be added to all of your analytics profiles without ever leaving the setup page—very cool.

You can even easily view the related charts or create a segment based on the specifics of the intelligence alert