Google Analytics

[Westech]

Has anyone seen Google's newest offering yet? Apparently Google is now offering the use of their web-based website traffic tracking system FREE: http://www.google.com/analytics/ From the looks of it, they've taken the technology from the Urchin web analytics company that they recently purchased , and are now letting people use a version of it free of charge.

I can't decide if this is awesome or scary. On one hand, who wouldn't like a free fully featured traffic tracking system that doesn't use any of your own server resources? On the other hand, do we really want Google having full access to all the traffic info for our sites? What's to stop them from using that info to launch competing services?

In particular, the geotracking feature looks really cool to me. This is a feature that I haven't been able to find in other tracking software without shelling out big bucks.

I'm tempted to use it, but still on the fence. What does everyone else think of this?

[Westech]

I just found the FAQ (https://www.google.com/support/analytics/). It has some interesting info:


Google Analytics is the latest version of Urchin On Demand, and features several changes. First, Google Analytics has been integrated with AdWords so that advertisers may access web analytics reports from the AdWords user interface. Google Analytics is also now hosted and managed using Google infrastructure and resources for scalability, privacy, and reliability. Additionally, the reporting interface has been redesigned for ease of use, and pageview limits have been removed.

Perhaps best of all, Google Analytics is free! We will no longer charge Urchin On Demand users for access, and we will not be charging new users for their use of Google Analytics.

[Blue Cat Buxton]

Can't log in to set up an account - I guess a few other people are trying!

[Westech]

Yeah, I'm experiencing the same thing. If they can't even handle the amount of people signing up how are they going to handle logging every page of every website that those people own? :)

[Cutter]

I'm signing up right now, really slow here too. Shame on Google, of all people they should never have slow servers (to go completely off topic, I remember once, about 7 years ago an online service I used was mentioned on the radio, and I waited nearly 40 minutes before the login page loaded.)

I just made a post about this on my blog. Here is a question I raised.. who says that Google isn't already tracking this stuff with through the Adsense code?

One other observation, when I used to use Urchin, the stats log took up tons of space. There is no way Google will be deleting this valuable data, so hopefully we will still be able to access it years from now.

[Westech]

I finally fought my way through the signup process. It looks VERY useful. I think I may just bite the bullet and set it up on CMG. As Cutter says, Google could (and probably is) track all of this through the Adsense javascript.

I also noticed during the signup process that they limit your use of the service to 5 million pageviews per month unless you have an active Adwords account, then you can track unlimited pageviews.

I guess this means that you could get the service for $5 per month with unlimited pageviews simply by spending $5 per month on Adwords whether you needed it or not?

[Cutter]

Yeah, I was just reading Matt Cutt's blog and he said you are limited to 5 mil if you don't have an Adwords account, but there is no minimum spend, so basically its free. Truth be told, the stats of all the websites pulling in over 5 million pageviews a month is worth money.

I've set up the tracking code on one of my biggest sites now. It says 12 hours before I get any data.

[Westech]

Yeah, mine too. The help docs (the ones that aren't missing from the site, wtf google!) say that it can take UP TO 12 hours, but usually updates every hour.

I've been looking through the currently blank reports and there's some good stuff in there. It looks like it really is the full-blown Urchin on Demand system with Adwords data integrated into the conversion tracking system.

[Emancipator]

interesting im gonna tinker with it on a new site of mine.

[r2d2]

I think I will give it a try.

I agree though - the amount of info that Google is now collecting is quite daunting.

Edit: Also, do you think it could affect page load performance with the extra JS file?

[moonshield]

it's snappy for me. Awesome software. I'm excited to see what it all looks like once everything is set up.

[Chris]

do they offer good referral reporting? when I've used urchin before it wasn't so robust, top 20 and all that.

[Mike Hunt]

The 'in writing', or even needing to notify them at all, is silly.

15. TERM and TERMINATION . Either party to the Agreement may terminate it at any time and for any reason.

Upon any termination or expiration of this Agreement... You will delete all copies of Google Analytics's UTM code from all Pages and certify thereto in writing to Google within three (3) business days of such termination.

[moonshield]

do they offer good referral reporting? when I've used urchin before it wasn't so robust, top 20 and all that.


I don't know. Its a bit better than Webalizer and Awstats though.

[jonnyhilfiger]

Oh great, more stats to keep me from doing what I should be doing. ;)

At least with my current AWStats setup it only updates once a day, so that is all I check it.

Might give it a go on one of my new sites though just to see what I'm missing.

John

[MarkB]

I signed up yesterday; unfortunately, it takes 12 hours to see reports (for the first time only?), so won't see all my purdy graphs until this afternoon. Awooo.

[Blue Cat Buxton]

OK, signed up now - you need to put the code between the Head tags though, so potentially time consuming to add to a lot of sites - not as easy as axs for example - but nicer presentation!

[dburdon]

Firstly, I'm not sure I want Google having all that information about my sites.
Secondly, I tried just to see. And despite following the instructions I couldn't make it work.

[Emancipator]

im still waiting for it to update, im well over 12 hours. I am just trying it out to test. I dont want google having that kinda info on my sites either. God knows who they will sell it to

[MarkB]

Yep, looks like Google's dropped the ball with this launch. HUGE delays on seeing the first set of stats with everyone I've seen (on blogs, etc) who have signed up. Sigh.

[Westech]

Yeah, I've never seen Google mess up like this. Usually even their "beta" stuff is rock solid. I wonder if anyone over at Gooooooooooooogle Analytics will be fiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiired over this?

[moonshield]

Same here. If I were paying for it and was having these problems I would be pissed but since its free I can be patient.

[Cutter]

No one getting stats yet? Its still showing 0 pageviews for me, and its been something like 24 hours now.

[Westech]

Same here. No stats for almost 24 hours. Status still shows "waiting for data."

[chromate]

Firstly, I'm not sure I want Google having all that information about my sites.

Agreed. It doesn't sit comfortably with me either. Probably being paranoid though.

[moonshield]

Agreed. It doesn't sit comfortably with me either. Probably being paranoid though.


Yea, but as mentioned before, they (and all other advertisers) are likely recording all of this information already.

[Cutter]

I'm more annoyed by their change over to Google Accounts login. I don't know if Adsense accounts have had to do this yet, but I had to rollover my Adwords login into a Google Accounts login. Basically this means all my Google searches are now connected to my Adwords and Adsense accounts.

This is just too far, especially considering I now run a blog where I can say either positive and negative things about Google & their employees. Speaking of which, I'm going to be doing a big blog post on this whole issue when I have time -- which I hope I'll be able to get some good links and news coverage from.

[MarkB]

Stats showing now - very nice (including Geo). Not bad for free ;)

[chromate]

I'm more annoyed by their change over to Google Accounts login. I don't know if Adsense accounts have had to do this yet, but I had to rollover my Adwords login into a Google Accounts login. Basically this means all my Google searches are now connected to my Adwords and Adsense accounts.

Yeah, i've had a few headaches over this. It got kind of complex, but without going into details, I updated the email and then found I could no longer change any of my campaigns. So I had a few reasonably expensive (for me at least) campaigns running that I had no way of stopping or altering until google replied to my mails. Scary.

[Westech]

I can see my stats now too. It's very nice! All of the report pages are now loading fairly quickly.

I'm still seeing 0 stats for today, and my numbers for yesterday look a little low compared to other tracking methods I'm using, so I assume they're around 12 hours or so behind in bringing in new stats.
EDIT: This is incorrect. I'm seeing stats for Monday and Tuesday, but not for Wednesday (yesterday) or today. This would mean that the reports are currently over 24 hours behind in updating. Sorry for the confusion. That's what I get for typing a post this long before my second cup of coffee.

It's a little hard to find your way around at first. They've given very confusing names to all of the reports. It seems that they've tried to skew the names of the reports towards webmasters using PPC advertising (to plug adwords), but once you find the right spot you can get pretty much any information you would want out of it.

Chris, your referral reporting is under Marketing Optimization -> Marketing Campaign Results -> Referral Conversion. You can expand the list of referrers to show up to 500 domains per page. You can page through the lists or search to see every last referral over any time period. You can expand each domain to see the exact page that the referrals came from.

After a lot of exploring, some of the more useful sections I've found so far are:

Marketing Optimization -> Serach Engine Marketing -> Overall Keyword Conversion.
This shows you the search engine keywords people are using to find your site (regardless of search engine.) You can expand each keyword set to see the breakdown of how many referrals for that keyword are coming from each search engine.

Marketing Optimization -> Search Engine Marketing -> CPC vs. Organic Conversion.
This report shows total referrals by search engine. It separates organic referrals vs. paid search engine referrals for each engine. Since I don't use PPC for the site I'm tracking I just use this report to track organic search engine referrals. All of the big ones seem to be included. You can expand each search engine to view the keywords for that search engine.

Marketing Optimization -> Visitor Segment Performance -> ......
There's a lot of good stuff under this section:

Geolocation shows a list of what countries your visitors are from (with percentage and number for each country.)

Geo Map Overlay shows a map of the world with dots over each city you've had visitors from. You can pan and zoom the map in and out. Mouse over each dot to see the name of the city and the number of visits from there over the time period you're viewing. This is a very cool feature, but the Flash interface they use for it is a little clunky. I'd really love to see them integrate this with their Google Maps interface!

Language shows the numbers and percentages for the languages of your visitors. (Meaning English vs. Spanish vs. Chinese... Not PHP vs. ASP vs. Java. :) )

There's a ton of other cool stuff sprinkled throughout too, including reports on visits, pageviews, visitor loyalty, screen resolution sizes, browsers used, java enabled, flash version, etc. The only thing I wanted but couldn't find was a report on visitors and pageviews per hour (i.e. what times of the day are the busiest.) It could still be buried in there somewhere. I'll keep looking.

This really is an amazing service. I can speak from experience that to keep extremely detailed stats like this for even one moderately high traffic site requires a huge amount of storage space and processor usage. I had tried Urchin in the past but had given up on having detailed stats like this because it just wasn't worth the overhead of an additional dedicated server just to track stats. Getting it free and 100% managed by Google is wonderful!

[Cutter]

Ok, I'm seeing stats now for Monday and Tuesday now. Very nice stuff!

Downside, now I have over 3 different programs telling me 3 totally different numbers for my daily uniques and pageviews :D

[thebillionaire]

wtf, doesnt work