Google Analytics

August 22, 2006 in 5 out of 5 stars, Analytics, Free, Hosted software, SEO/SEM

What is it?

Google Analytics: Web analytics (statistics + analysis) software that anyone with a website can use.

After Google initially launched this service, they were crushed with interest and they shut down new sign ups. However, after several months, the gates are open again.

Who makes it?

Google (although they bought and tweaked Urchin's product to create this).

Why is it the killerest?

The information it provides is super-rich without being unwieldy (unwieldiness is a common ailment afflicting analytics software).

You can use it to track simple traffic statistics, but you can also you use it (and here's the real power) to track conversions and associated behavior (this is the heart of Seth's point  number 5). It integrates closely with your AdWords campaigns but can also track any marketing initiative you run, Google-based or not. It's hard to overstate the power and importance of that. If you do commerce online, you're insane not to be using this to measure.

It has great visual representations of your information, making it easily digestible. This includes graphs, charts, and a very nifty site-overlay showing you where and how people click through your site on their way to conversion Also, Geo-targeting map representations, date-range comparisons, and more.

It's simple and quick (just a few minutes) to integrate into your site, just drop a snippet of code on each page you wish to track.

What could be improved?

Some of the more common data feels buried.

The data is always about a day old.

Potential for some tin-foil hat anxiety about Google's increasingly Sauron-like all-seeing-eye.

How much does it cost?

Astonishingly Free

Rating?

Reviewed by Carson McComas

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I've had a look at a good few different stats and analysis products. Just for visitor analysis it bugs me because it didn't accurately record the hits on the site but that was a good while ago so maybe they have fixed that since.

The day old stats also really annoys me. I would have thought it would be pretty straight forward to have this information real time.

Statcounter.com has a huge number of users and you see your information instantly which is a clincher for smaller sites I think.

Now in saying that i do think google.com looks quite nice and the integration with google adwords with conversion tracking make it very useful for larger sites and more commercial sites.

I do think for smaller sites with no conversion point you would be better off using statcounter.

my 2 cents ...