Google Analytics, can you trust Google
- 11th Jun 2008
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I’m not knocking GA at all by the way, but I was asked a question today that really made me think and think again, I hate when I have to do that .. Bronson a good friend over in South Africa works for a Online Casino, btw, I asked if I could blog his question and you see his dilemma :
Dave we have some major reservations about deploying Google analytics as a solution – as a result of the business we’re in as well as the fact that people in the US are trying to sign up to play online we take every measure to ensure that US citizens can’t download and gamble, but they can download and play for free.
Are these fears unfounded (I am thinking about news where Google handed over data regarding users on Orkut) – is this a valid concern?
Well I guess it could be, I suggest that that you don’t share your data with anyone, how many privacy policies state we wouldn’t share user data then we stick on Google Analytics, a few ad servers etc etc, aren’t you really sharing your users data. I guess this is why in the UK they are trying to pass Laws on IP tracking..
Honestly I’m still thinking about this. any ideas ?
DaveN
I’m still going to use Google Analytics
14 Comments | Leave a comment »
I think with Google constantly changing their rules and some of their double standards I think it would be wise to be a little paranoid about what they may do with your data.
I am paranoid about having more than 1 website per analytics account and that’s just in case if they penalise one site for its SEO techniques could they use the data to penalise more.
When it comes down to more serious matters such as the law I would be even more paranoid. Obviously catching paedophiles is slightly more important than catching out some illegal gamblers. But the ball has started rolling so how long will it be before Google dish out info every time the authorities ask.
GA is good but there are still plenty of other options around so if your website is doing anything that might piss Google off I would recommend not giving them any more evidence than you have too.
i can understand your point, but the problem is that, people become habituated to use a certain product, and it becomes difficult to leave it.
I wanted to use some other tracking service, apart from google analytics, but if i don’t check my stats on analytics 20 times a day, i don’t feel like doing anything, sadly!
Hi Dave,
Thanks a mill for opening this up to debate, it feels to me a bit like damned if you do, damned if you don’t.
In all fairness, GA is a cracking analytics suite which makes old faithfuls like AW Stats and Webalizer look a bit pedestrian.
I will be keeping a keen eye on this post to see how people feel about this and and some of the the other solutions out in the marketplace.
uttoransen - I know exactly what you mean, the thing is that GA is sweet, you don’t even have to check on it, set up the dashboard so it speaks english and automate the reporting. crisp, clean, simple.
There are too many people out there looking at numbers and not enough producing them.
When it comes to Google I always have my tin foil hat on.
That’s not to say they don’t make good stuff - GMail, Analytics, etc. are all great, it’s just that I’m not particularly happy about sharing so much data with Google.
Maybe if I wasn’t doing any SEO or PPC stuff I wouldn’t be so paranoid!
GA is surely nice to look at, and it’s for free, but I wouldn’t want Google to know absolutely everything about my sites. For this reason I recommend using similar commercial products to our customers who want to track their visits and turnover. These are not really cheap, but for a serious shopowner 50€/month shouldn’t be the problem.
I’m wouldn’t like to share my data with Google. My biggest problem with Google Analytics however is how inaccurate it is. I wouldn’t recommend using it as an analytics product on a clients website unless they have no budget for a better product. Check the data against your server logs and see just how far out it is.
haha oddly enough i work in the same industry as Bronson. in fact for a rival company in the office park next door :P
anyway we use GA to augment our tracking. and i haven’t had any problems with GA, the fact that it’s free isn’t really of consequence the reporting is actually pretty damn close to our servers logs, and considering the amount of hits our servers gets it handles it pretty well…
i don’t see how this has anything to do with privacy. sure GA is tracking the user, but a privacy statement is about personal details such as mail contact details etc. unless it gets to the point where everyone has a static ip address
“US citizens can’t download and gamble…” i bet USD is still an currency option in your software esp since your running MG software. and besides that only applies to 13 or so states
Urchin? Fairly decent compromise, and doesn’t cost the earth (for a casino site anyway). Upside is the data stays on your server.
Thabnks for reminding me Richard, I saw a while back that Urchin went public… i think I had better pop over there and have another look.
Aplogies for the spellin, it’s a pesky new ketboard and needs to be broken in. I also have fat fingers this week. lol!
Hi, I would NEVER even consider using google analytics. With an adwords spend as big as mine, it would be SEO suicide to share all of my visitor data with google. Matt Cutts hinted in his blog back in 2005 when google analytics was launched that blackhat SEOs should beware - now “blackhat SEOs”, that’s a loose definition and I would not want to put google in a better position to give me any negative SEO effect by sharing my data.
Anyone who is serious about SEO should avoid this product at all costs in my opinion, its another big step for google in terms of controlling their users’ adwords spend by altering natural search rankings.
Would be interested to hear your thoughts.
Also why not opt for something like visistat.com who offer a great reporting interface and indepth analysis tools for only $15 a month?!
$15 a month for peace of mind sounds good to me :-)
hi guys.
i presented a case for Urchin as opposed to GA and it’s already up and running - they decided that it’s better that the data resides on our side of the fence as it were.
The other nice fact is that Urchin talks directly to the server logs if I am not mistaken, so there’s no need for the usual GA code snippets.
Anyways, it always nice to see the top brass poking around in it now, and they’re loving it. It’s also uber sweet not to be flying blind anymore. (we were running without any analytics for what felt like an eternity)