Presentation analytics

Once you've sent a deck, Analytics shows you what happens next: who opened it, how far they got, and which slides held their attention. Follow up while it's still fresh in their mind, and see exactly where your story loses people.

Analytics is built on private links. Give each person a link of their own, and every visit reports back: when it happened, where it came from, the device it was on, and the time spent on each slide.

Get started

1. Open Share for your deck and create a private link for each person or group you're sending it to.
2. Name each link after its recipient, such as “Sarah Chen, Northwind” or “Board meeting.” The name is what tells you who a visit came from.
3. Send each person their link. Viewers don't need a Slides account, and there's nothing for them to sign in to.
4. Select Analytics in the header to see visits as they arrive.

You can also get there from Share. Each link shows its number of visits: select the count to see that link's analytics, or select Analytics below the list of links to see the whole deck.

The dashboard

Analytics lists every deck you've shared with a private link, most recently visited first. Select a deck to see how it's doing, and choose a period from the last 7 days to All time, or pick Custom dates.

The tiles at the top sum up the period:

• Visits: How many times the deck was viewed, and by how many unique viewers.
• Visit length: How long a typical visit lasted, and the total time spent with the deck.
• Gets to: The slide a typical visit reached, and how many visits made it to the last slide.
• Devices: How visits split between desktop, phone, and tablet.

A typical value is the median: half of the visits are shorter or got less far, and half are longer or got further. A few unusually long visits won't distort it.

See who opened your deck

Viewers aren't asked to identify themselves. Instead, each private link tells you who it was for. Links shows a card for each one, with its visits, when it was last opened, how long a typical visit lasted, and how many visits reached the end.

Select a link to narrow the whole dashboard to its visits. That's the quickest way to answer “Did they open it, and did they read it?” before a follow-up call. Select Manage links to rename links or create new ones.

Follow each visit

Visits lists every visit, newest first. Each row shows when the visit happened, the link it came through, its source, such as Gmail, Slack, or LinkedIn, and the device it was on. A strip shows the time spent on each slide, and Got to shows how far through the deck the viewer went. Visits opened from an email app or a pasted link show Direct as their source.

Each visit also shows a letter for its viewer and which of their visits it was, such as 2nd visit. When someone comes back, their letter gets a color of its own, so their visits stand out in the list. Select it to see all of that viewer's visits.

Select a visit to see it in detail. The tiles show its path through the deck, how its length and progress compare with other visits, and its device. The chart compares the time it spent on each slide with the average visit.

Find the slides that land

Across the deck charts every slide in your presentation. Switch between three measures:

• Time: The average time visits spent on each slide.
• Reach: The share of visits that got to each slide. A steep step down shows where people stop reading.
• Views: How many times each slide was viewed, including revisits.

Highlights above the chart point out the slide with the most time, the biggest drop-off, and the most revisited slide. Select a highlight or any bar to see that slide beside the chart, with its average time, reach, views, and total time. Use the arrows, or the ← and → keys, to step through slides, or switch to the table for every slide's exact numbers.

Each slide's numbers stay with that slide, so you can keep improving a deck after sharing it. When you reorder slides, their numbers move with them, and new slides start counting from their first view.

Analytics for teams

On a Team plan, every member sees analytics for their own decks, and can switch between My decks and Team decks to see analytics for any deck that's shared with the team or public. Members' private decks stay private.

In Share, members see every private link made for those decks and who made it. They can use and change their own links, while the deck's owner and team admins can manage them all.

What counts as a visit

• A visit is someone opening a private link and viewing slides for at least 2 seconds. Opening the link again starts a new visit.
• Time counts only while the presentation is on screen and in use. Time in a background tab or while the viewer is away doesn't count.
• A slide is reached once it has been on screen for half a second.
• Unique viewers are counted by browser, so one person on two devices, or in a private window, counts twice.
• Your own visits don't count while you're signed in to Slides.
• Embeds of a private link count too. An embedded deck's visit starts when someone first interacts with it.
• Visits through the Default, Fullscreen, and Scroll link types are recorded. Autoplay links, public links, speaker view, and live streams aren't.

Deleting a link stops new visits through it, but its past visits still count toward the deck's totals. Analytics keeps visits for two years and starts with visits made after it was turned on for your account.

Privacy

Analytics doesn't show you viewers' names, email addresses, or locations, and Slides doesn't store viewers' IP addresses. A visit is identified only by the link it came through, so name links after the people you share them with.

Google Analytics

Analytics covers private links. To measure traffic to public decks and your profile page, you can also connect Google Analytics.