Google Analytics

[Seth]

Anyone have success using Google Analytics yet?

http://www.google.com/intl/en/press/...analytics.html
http://www.google.com/analytics/

It's free up to 5 million page views/month & unlimited if you have an active Adwords account. Who doesn't?

It will integrate with your Adwords account and looks very promising. With that said, Google has a PR nightmare on their hands:

http://news.com.com/Bumpy+start+for+...3-5956308.html

We activated it on several sites two days ago and have had zero data reported so far. Apparently this is common at the moment as the demand is greater then they expected:

http://groups.google.com/group/analy...p-troubleshoot
http://www.computerworld.com/databas...106274,00.html


I'm hopeful that once Google fixes their problems this will become a great tool. We've used Urchin, the software it's based on, for several years and am looking forward to what amounts to a hosted web based version. If they can deliver what is promised this will surely be a very useful tool.

[Lee]

It does look interesting although i cant help but wonder what data is included that we cant already find on our normal server logs other than the Adwords integration?

Regards,

Lee

[thejungle]

Hi!

All my sites on Google Analytics are coming up as `Waiting for Data'.

I think one of the sites manages to get stats for one day but I guess it will all settle down after a few weeks,

Ernie

[Lippi]

(Original can be found on http://www.free-seo-news.com/newsletter186.htm#facts)

Should you use Google Analytics or should you stay away from it?

Why is Google Analytics free? Does Google have to give money away? Of course not. Google will find ways to monetize this service. There is no such thing as free lunch. Everything, even what is seemingly free, must be paid for by somebody in some way.
Google already knows a lot of things about you. If you also use their new tracking service, you will tell Google how much you earn, when you earn it, which products you sell, how often you sell them, how much you spend for ads on other sites and you will reveal much more information about your online business.
Ask yourself if you want Google to know that much about you and your company. Do you really want to share your revenue information with a company that also wants your advertising dollars? Do you want to share your revenue information with any other company at all?
Google officials have declined that they will use the data to better understand how much you are willing to pay for ads, based on conversions. They also claim that they do not plan to tap into the data as a means of improving regular search results or to identify bad sites. Nevertheless, these things are easily possible if you use Google Analytics.
Google engineer Matt Cutts even writes in his blog: "Blackhat SEOs may be leery of using Google for analytics, but regular site owners should be reassured." That sounds as if Google might actually use the information for other purposes.

Think twice before using anything that is "free"

While Google's new analytics tool looks great at first glance, you should think twice before using it. The market power of Google can make your business highly dependent on Google if you decide to use all of Google's services. The more Google knows about you, the better they can get your money.
If a company in the real world asked you to tell them everything about your interests, the shops you visit, the magazines you read, your full address, your revenue and a lot of other very detailed and confidential information about you and your company then you probably wouldn't give that information to the company.
When it comes to Google, many people happily reveal information they wouldn't even tell their friends. Be careful.

[MWCren]

I'm trying it out, if it is too cumbersome or the info is not any more valuable, I'll just delete the site profile and remove the javascript from the pages. You don't have to go full on with the revenue analysis. I would like to see entry and exit page info, time spent, etc.

I put the code on a few pages yesterday.. took 2 hours to validate the code, and now its been 24 hours collecting data. I can imagine the little google gremlins, in little data mining caps, collecting and categorizing and indexing...(anyone remember the underpants gnomes from South Park?)....LOL the anticipation is probably more exciting than the results will be.