Imagine if you could get an article published in your local paper, and then somehow find out exactly how many people read your article, how many people looked at the headline but didn’t read it, and how many people started reading it but then lost interest in a few seconds. While it would be hard to do this with a newspaper, this is exactly the kind of data you can get from Google Analytics. And while the analytics data isn’t always perfect, it at least gives you a good overall idea of who’s coming to your site and why.
If you have a website, read on to find out the good and bad side of Google Analytics.
What is Google Analytics?
Google Analytics is a free web-based program that records activity on your website. Here is just a partial list of what your analytics data can tell you:
- the number of daily visitors
- the most popular pages on your site
- referral sources to your site
- geographic location of your users
- how long visitors stay on your site
As you can see, you can get a lot of data from Google Analytics, but some of the data may not be accurate because of the way the software works.
How Does Google Analytics Work?
Google Analytics works with the help of a special programming language called JavaScript. Every time a web page on your site is loaded, the web server sends information about the web visitor to Google’s analytics servers. Special software on the servers compile this information for later retrieval by a webmaster.
One of the things the software program does is to try to determine whether this is a new site visitor or a returning visitor. And this is where the problem with accuracy comes in.
Why Isn’t Google Analytics Always Accurate?
In order to accurately figure out whether a visitor is new or returning, Google relies on a small text file called a cookie that it places on the internet user’s computer. As long as this cookie remains on the computer, Google’s information will be accurate. But if the cookie gets deleted, Google no longer recognizes that user as a returning visitor. This changes the way the visit to the website is counted. Let’s take a simple example to see why this could lead to inaccurate data.
Let’s say web visitor A comes to your site for the first time. Google doesn’t see a cookie on his computer, so it correctly counts him as a first-time visitor and places a cookie on his computer so it can recognize him next time. Later in the day, visitor A comes back. Google checks his computer and sees the cookie, so it counts him as a return visitor. So the tally for the day is 1 unique visitor.
Now let’s say that visitor A deleted all the cookies on his computer between visits to the website. This can happen if he clears out his browser history or runs an antivirus check. Now when he comes back for the second time, Google once again thinks he’s a first-time visitor. In this case the tally for the day would show 2 unique visitors.
Another problem with relying solely on Google is its inability to detect internet robots visiting your site. Because Google Analytics relies on JavaScript, and robots don’t trigger the JavaScript code, Google won’t tell you when a robot has come calling.
Given these weaknesses, what alternatives are there?
What Are the Alternatives to Google Analytics?
The alternative to the Google Analytics model is to put an analytics program right on your web server. The advantage here is that the web server can use its own log files to extract information about visitors, without relying on cookies or JavaScript. Most hosting companies offer free web analytics software as part of their hosting plan. AWstats and Webalizer are just two of the more popular options. These are known as server-side analytics because they live and work on your web server.
So if the server-side analytics solves these problems, you may be wondering why you should even bother with Google Analytics.
So Why Do I Need Google Analytics?
Despite its shortcomings, Google Analytics still has a place in helping you optimize your website. Because of its reliance on JavaScript, Google can extract more information about the visitor such as their browser type, operating system and connection speed. Google Analytics can also alert you to significant changes in your analytics patterns. And if you’re doing any pay-per-click advertising in Google, Analytics is an absolute must.
For these reasons, most webmaster will use both server-side analytics on their web hosts and Google Analytics. Combined together, these programs will give you a better idea of who’s coming to your website and why.
