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Will, the creator of the [...]
How Accurate is Google Web Analytics
Having accurate Web Analytics is very important as a blogger or website builder. You need to be able to track your visitors properly and find out what is going on at any given point in time with your sites. There are a lot of people out there that praise Google Web Analytics for being the best and most accurate. I hate to say this but I think they are wrong.
About a month ago I started two affiliate marketing blogs. After they were about two weeks old I was looking to see how they were doing when I was doing my morning routine of checking my stats. Something was not adding up when I saw the web analytics report for these two new sites of mine. One of the sites according to Google web analytics had only five visitors, but when I checked where that traffic came from it said that I had 15 uniques from my social bookmarking site called Link Adore plus some search engine traffic.I had even bought traffic once in June to come to this site as a test and seen that Google didn’t pick up any of that traffic but my Awstats recorded all of it and the right amount as well.
If Google is not going to give us or show us the right amount of backlinks to our sites because they are concerned “WE” webmasters might figure out how to game there search engine and get our sites ranked better then it would make sense for them not to give us accurate web analytics as well, we can figure things out there too. I do believe however that what information is shown to us is accurate but I think what is shown to us is not all that there should be.
I have also tested out Woopra web analytics as well in the past and that is even more way off from what I can tell. Somedays they even shown less traffic then Google to some of my sites. As more and more time goes on I am edging more towards believing my server stats “Awstats” over everyone else. I know it may not be bang on, but I don’t think any of the web analytics systems that are out there are very accurate.
Watch todays video and then leave a comment with your thoughts.
- 14 Comments
- Tags: accurate web analytics, analytics, google, Web Analytics, Woopra
It is funny that you mention that because I have been thinking the same thing. I do quite a bit of blogging and on some of my blogs I have a little widget called FeedJit that sits on the sidebar. This widget tracks live stats. There is a little chime that will sound off when I get a visitor and at times that chime goes off non-stop. Yet next day when Google Analytics catches up it doesn’t even report half the traffic the FeedJit widget reported.
You may be on to something. I wish I had the time to do a case study of some kind. I am sure that you don’t have the time either. However, I am sure that if someone were to do some kind of testing on this, they would prove your point to be correct. Very interesting that you bring up this topic and very curious to see what others have to say about it. Great job Collin.
ReplyThats an interesting post – take a look at the following whitepaper for a full description of web analytics accuracy considerations: http://www.advanced-web-metrics.com/docs/accuracy-whitepaper.pdf
You will find that GA is just as accurate as any other page tag solution which are in fact a great deal more accurate than log analysers…
Best regards, Brian
ReplyGood information, I personally am awaiting for Woopra to approve my account so I can test them. If they don’t prove reliable, well I guess AwStats is always there to help me out
Reply@Garry Conn:
ReplyYa Garry, time to check this out is a bit hard to free up. It’s funny I use to think building a bunch of websites was a bad idea and now that I am heavy into it I can see for now there is no other way to go. Thanks for coming by Garry and for the trackback.
@Dustin:
ReplyDustin, let me know what you think. Maybe they got better then they were two weeks ago but for some reason I am thinking not.
@Brian Clifton:
ReplyBrian – thanks for the link I will check it out.
You definitely see major differences even when you compare Google Analytics to other big vendors. I had a case where traffic from China hasn’t been reported. Another case where mobile traffic hasn’t been put into consideration.
ReplyGoogle Analytics overall is a great solution as long as you look at the basics.
@Sebastian:
ReplyIts weird that someone or some company can’t build a system that tracks everything 100%, oh well looks like we have to just figure things out on our own and interpret our data we do get the best we can.
Interesting comment Sebastian
We have some pretty major clients doing some sophisticated stuff using Google Analytics. As you say, a basic install gives you basic information – same for any vendor. Have you looked at the book at http://www.Advanced-Web-Metrics.com?
Disclosure – I am the author of Advanced Web Metrics using Google Analytics
ReplyExcellent post (I was wondering when the next video was
)
Personally I’ve never used anything but Statcounter and am quite satisfied.
I definitely wanna check out that widget Gary mentioned though…
ReplyOh and finally figured out my avatar mess as you can see LOL
Replyoh well looks like we have to just figure things out on our own and interpret our data we do get the best we can.
ReplyI have been using a friends beta program and its analytics go way beyond googles. I wonder what other analytical programs are out there now and well they are measuring up.
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