Google Analytics Archive

Google made two big announcements today around their Analytics service: a real-time chart which we covered earlier and a new premium analytics service. The premium analytics service is geared towards Google’s largest customers and includes the following items listed on their announcement posting:

• Extra processing power – increased data collection, more custom variables and downloadable, unsampled reports
• Advanced analysis – attribution modeling tools that allow you to test different models for assigning credit to conversions
• Service and support – experts to guide customized installation, and dedicated account management on call – all backed by 24/7 support
• Guarantees – service level agreements for data collection, processing and reporting

So basically for a fee, Google will provide a stronger server to run your custom reports, a dedicated account manager and a 24/7 support and service level agreement (SLA). The one thing Google didn’t note in their announcement post was the cost for the premium analytics offering.

I have received tips from several sources noting that the price for the premium analytics service is A WHOPPING $150,000/year.

If your company wants to use Google Analytics Premium, you can either signup directly with Google or with one of their resellers. Be ready to bring your checkbook.

For comparison, many report paying over $100K a year for Adobe’s Omniture SiteCatalyst offering. I can’t remember what we used to pay for Webtrends Enterprise at my old job but it was in the same ballpark.

Today Google announced the launch of real-time analytics within their Google Analytics service. I’ve been in the web analytics area since the first beta of Webtrends and am glad to see Google finally offering a real-time feature as part of their very popular metrics offering. Real-time stats are critical when you run ad campaigns or are now using social media tools to help spread your marketing messages. When you monitor real-time stats, you can make changes on-the-fly to your campaigns to optimize the heck out of your spend. I also hear from other bloggers that they use real-time metrics tools to monitor for traffic based on adjustments to story titles to see which provide a better response.

Naturally today’s Google Analytics announcement must mean that real-time analytics tools including Clicky, Chartbeat, SiteMeter, Woopra and ExtremeTracking are dead. Maybe these tools should consider a quick pivot to real-time daily deals (I kid!).

Blogger Holden Page immediately noted, “Google Analytics went real-time. In one fell swoop hit about four startups, one of which I use religiously (Clicky) with an iron fist.”

I like the blog post by the Clicky team – they always use pepper sarcasm into their posts. The title of their blog post reads, “SHUT. DOWN. EVERYTHING.”

They note, “Hmm… did anyone actually read the announcement that Google made today? This isn’t “real time Google Analytics”, this is a single report in GA that is real time. The rest of GA remains the same. This is more akin to Chartbeat, to be used as a real time compliment to a standard analytics package, rather than a full standalone real time service like Clicky is. But I guarantee you Chartbeat will be just fine, as will everyone else. We’ve all had, and continue to have, plenty of advantages over GA other than real time data.”

They then link to a number of tweets that signal death for Clicky, Woopra and Chartbeat. The quotes include:

• “Sites like Clicky will soon be out of business”
• “getclicky and chartbeat ought to run for the hills”
• “Is this the beginning of the end of Woopra?”
• “Google killing off Chartbeat”

I am still waiting to see proof where death of a service occurred because a large company put out an offering in that space. I guess the closest we could come would be all those tools that built on top of Twitter only to have Twitter build their own – but remember I warned against that many moons ago.

Continue reading “Chartbeat, Clicky & Other Real-Time Analytics Tools Must Be Dead…Right?” »

The big news in the social media expert camp from last week was the notification that all links that are posted on Twitter, both on the website and using a third-party app, will now automatically be converted to use Twitter’s official t.co URL shortener. You can read the Twitter help post and the developer guide to learn more about t.co and how it works. Part of the conversation around the t.co rollout reminds me of some of the discussion when Digg launched the Diggbar.

Short tl:dr version: Just because a t.co url appears in your referral log, it does not mean that all the traffic to that url has come from Twitter.

Sean at the analytics service Clicky posted about how the change to use t.co will make it appear that Twitter has zero influence because the referral logs will show t.co instead of twitter.com going forward. When I initially read the post, I thought there was something wrong but couldn’t put my finger on it at the time. Yesterday Zee at the Next Web (note: they are a Twitter default user) created a post titled, “Twitter Just Got the Respect it Deserves”. He continues along the same lines as Clicky and has several key points:

• Twitter is now influential in terms of traffic from an “eyes of the media” standpoint
• Facebook and Stumbleupon better watch out because now Twitter will appear really big as a social media traffic driver
• Brands and businesses will now take note of how influential Twitter is
• You can search to find out which tweet was the influential one because you can search on a specific t.co url

Unfortunately it looks like there are issues with both the Clicky post (and the very wrong change they made to their service) and Zee’s statements.

Continue reading “Behavior Patterns of Twitter’s T.Co URL Shortener and Why Zee/Clicky Are Wrong” »

Web site monitoring service Pingdom is out with another report today, this time focusing on Google Analytics usage within the Alexa top 500 sites. Pingdom verified each site and found that 32.3% of the top 500 use Google Analytics to monitor their sites. The 33% number is a bit high in my opinion. Most large sites use "industrial" analytics applications like Omniture or Webtrends.

Pingdom suggests that most use Google Analytics because it’s free. What we still do not know is how the data is used on the backend – even if Google suggests it’s not being used, it’s still being dumped into the huge database that Google maintains on each one of us.

My guess is that if Pingdom runs the same test on the top 2,000-10,000, the Google Analytics count will be much higher – probably in the 60% range. This is currently their sweet spot – outside the Fortune 500 and down to the brand new blog with one reader.

I still believe a combination of internal trackers and external trackers (both for the local site and for the competition) is the optimum combination for success.

If you are interested in not being tracked by Google as you browse site-to-site, check out James Thomas’ article about how he lives without Google.

The Google Analytics blog is reporting that their analytics software, Urchin, has moved the latest version named Urchin Software into public beta. Urchin is similar to Google Analytics but is managed on your servers which is typically needed for companies whose data is behind a firewall or for those companies who want more customization options.

The most direct competition would be analytics products including WebTrends. Other hosted products that area also competitiors include Omniture. Pricing for Urchin Software will be $2995 once out of beta and will be a flat price which is a change from the current pricing for Urchin 5.

The major upgrade list from Urchin 5 include:

• More accurate geo-identification of visitors
• Cross-segmentation options similar to Google Analytics
• E-commerce and campaign tracking included (no longer requiring additional modules)
• Vastly improved embedded scheduler to more easily manage processing and re-processing jobs
• Improved user interface
• More robust log processing engine

As you can see from the screenshot, the interface is the same as Google Analytics:

I get various requests from time to time asking me which analytics applications. So here is my list of the current analytics applications I use on my web sites with a short bit of commentary on each one. They are not listed in any particular order. You can also check out my previous post which offers several free and almost-free analytics options. I don’t believe most Web sites need the insane number of tools I run but each one offers me something unique and, in addition, I like to test as well.

Clicky

Clicky is currently my favorite analytics application. The interface is excellent, has a Web 2.0 feel to it without going overboard. The best features are the real-time spy and the IP user lookup. The user maps and location information is very detailed giving you insights into where your users are, how they access your site, and what they do on your site.

General comments:

• The basic account is limited to 1,000 pageviews per day. Most users will want the $2.99 plan.
• There is an affiliate program which earns credits towards free premium memberships.
• Support is great and the site is very user-friendly.
• Clicky is also running an API contest currently. So far I know of one entry at ideAjax which basically is a sweet world map.

eXTReMe Tracking

eXTReMe Tracking has the absolute best user lookup tools that I have found to-date. If you want to be able to look at individual users and their patterns, eXTReMe Tracking does this very well. The rest of the app is strong, but not the strongest of the tools listed.

General comments:

• The free account is limited and requires you to place a graphic on your site. The pro account is $4.50 a month.
• The "on the map" feature is the best user mapping tool I have tried. In fact, Dateline NBC used it on a sting operation last year.
• The site does have a short learning curve and the interface layout could be improved.

Google Analytics

I have used Google Analytics since they first launched and the new version is very powerful. I don’t love GA but keep it running because it is generally the best comparison from site-to-site.

General comments:

• Some users report that the Goals options don’t always track correctly
• I am not crazy about Google controlling every aspect of my site including the site traffic.
• Overall, this is the most popular analytics app for three reasons: Google’s trust level, their ability to market it thru the AdWords program and that the app is free.

Mint

I like Mint. It is the fastest of the analytics applications listed and it runs on your local server. I used to believe it was better to keep everything on your local server with regards to analytics apps, but today there ASP model apps have really improved their ability to track and not lose data.

General comments:

• There is no free plan, $30 gets you a license for the current x.y version. Once x is upgraded, the charge is $15.
• There is an excellent support community who can help with support and extending the app.
• Mint offers "Peppers" which are basically add-ons to extend the functionality of the app. Most are built by the Mint community.

Quantcast

Quantcast is the odd man out in this grouping. Quantcast doesn’t provide as much detail as the above and is really used as a ranking and evaluation tool. Sites that use their plugin are called "Quantified Publishers" on the site. Frankly I wish more sites would use this because then it could create more fair comparisons. Quantcast is what Alexa wishes it would be.

Final summary

I left Complete off the list because I am currently working with them to attempt to rectify the reporting issues on CN. Once they have corrected the issues, I will post my thoughts on Complete. I have not included the "professional" level packages such as Webtrends, Omniture and WebSideStory. Lastly, many web hosting packages provide basic metrics applications. I didn’t include these because I find that they are generally worthless and out-of-date.

What tools are you using? Is it one (or more) of the above? Are there others I should be reviewing/testing?

Doing proper analysis of your web app or blog is critical to its success. It is vital that you monitor the who, what, when, where and why visitors are coming to your web site. If you expect to get VC money or to be able to sell advertising, you must prove the traffic your site receives. I love analytics and have reviewed somewhere close to 200 tools over the years. I have come up with what I consider to be five of the top analytics tools that are either free or very low cost. These tools will help you answer the 5 w’s of your web site. List is in no specific order and all of the tools I am suggesting just require a few lines of javascript code in your footer include to get them working. Less than 10 minutes setup.

ExtremeTracking

Product Link | Product Demo

Price: $54/yr or $6.25/month full version, free version also available – must show stats icon

Pros:

• Excellent IP tools – find out exactly where your visitors are coming from down to the individual company or location
• You can drill down to a specific page and get all of the stats just for that individual page
• Tracks connection speed, OS, browser, java/javascript, screen colors and resolutions
• CSV downloads
• Ability to exclude IPs from reporting (good for excluding yourself, team, etc.)

Cons:

• Poor history – only offers full access for last 300 visitors, then is grouped by day, week, etc.
• Not the prettiest thing in the world
• Free version allows anyone to view your stats

Screenshots – click to enlarge

Mint

Product Link | Product Demo

Price: $30 one-time

Pros:

• Very Web 2.0, excellent design and usability
• Lots of “Pepper” – plugins
• a forum for help and the creator actually helps with installation and usage questions
• RSS Feeds

Cons:

• History is limited beyond 24 hours back
• No ability to customize time period for reports
• No export option outside of RSS
• Only can exclude one IP address

Screenshots – click to enlarge

Google Analytics

Product Link | Product Tour

Price: Free

Pros:

• Tied in with Google AdWords and Google Checkout
• Free and no icon required
• Provides good basic stats
• Good export options – text, csv, xml

Cons:

• Not the most indepth tool
• Works the best when you use AdWords and/or Checkout
• Can’t exclude IPs

Screenshots – click to enlarge

HitBox

Product Link | Product Demo

Price: $323/yr, $34.95/month

Pros:

• Full featured web analytics tool
• Ability to receive reports via e-mail
• Provides good basic stats
• Good export options – text, csv, xml

Cons:

• Higher cost
• Reports limited to 100 web pages
• Reports are huge and take some time to generate

Screenshots – click to enlarge

SiteMeter

Product Link | Product Demo

Price: Free, must display stats icon

Pros:

• Real-time stats
• Ability to receive reports via e-mail
• Provides good basic stats
• Pretty cool traffic predictor

Cons:

• Must display a SiteMeter icon on your site
• Heavy advertising on report display
• Not the prettiest design

Screenshots – click to enlarge

Summary

I use Mint, Google Analytics and ExtremeTracking on CenterNetworks. I think together they provide the most comprehensive coverage for my needs. Each tool has its own pros and cons so you can decide what you need/want for your web site/blog. I would suggest at a minimum you use Google Analytics because it is free. And get it working today. Each day you wait, is another day of no ability to speak to your traffic. Even if you never look at a report, do it anyway. When you get your funding, sell the site, or get your first advertiser, you can thank me :).