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Friday, August 03, 2007

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increase website traffic

google Web Analytics is just a great tool. you really see what you website is doing.

Adsense Analytics Integrated

Hi.. First of all... a nice post... contains valuable infomation for me.. I think adding adsense earnings reports to Analytics by Google was indeed a nice step. I have written a nice article about this, which can be found in my Name link. But while I was writing this I had one question in my mind, will they be providing us publishers with details for every ad displayed or for every page?? Please let me know this...

Ted Rheingold

Dave,

Have you heard the theory that GoogLytics downplays the number of inbound visitors from non-Google search engines?

This is all uneducated speculation and should not be considered the opinion of my and my company, but my other stat software shows a higher rate of inbound links from non-Goog search engines than GoogLytics does.

But keep your ears open on this one. It sure makes Google looking more attractive to advertise on if it seems like it's bringing in that much more organic referrals.

Searchquant

Great post, Dave, but Google Analytics is by no means the best game in town. Omniture, ClickTracks, WebTrends and at least a dozen other independent SEMs & analytics firms have contributed far, far more to the optimization of websites and associated ppc campaigns than Google Analytics ever did.

If you look at the top 1000 AdWords advertisers, *very few* are using Google Analytics becuase they rightly fear that giving Google conversion data will [drumroll] help Google get more data with which to optimize *their* revenue and not the advertiser's.

A couple other points:

1) Google's trials in selling traffic on a CPA basis have so far been limited solely to the crappy traffic in their distribution network. Google gets ~20% of its revenues from contextual advertising, but any analytically-focused advertiser or SEM will tell you that a good AdWords campaign only gets ~5% of its transactions from Content. So Google's getting 4X more revenue from Content than they should. Don't expect Google to get aggressive in CPA-based buying anytime soon, because it'd cost them about, oh, $50B in market cap if it were ever fully rolled out. Google's paying lip service to CPA more than anything else.

2) That Google is as aggressive with analytics as they are means a)they've largely run out of the type of organic growth that let them beat estimates by wide margins; and b)they feel their traffic is undervalued relative to its intrinsic value. IMO, if Google maintains or boosts its share price, it'll be because they turn further monetization screws at the expense of advertisers, and not because everyone uses G Analytics and suddenly boosts ROI.

Kevin Peyton

thanks dave - a great 101 for web site statistics.

Aaronontheweb (AjaxNinja)

Great article Dave. I liked the brief history of where targeted ads came from (I remember when DoubleClick and ValueClick were the only names in the game) and your thoughts on where Google is going with this metrics business.

I was playing around a bit with MyBlogLog today and it seems more like a gimmick than a valuable tool. I'm considering adding the recent readers widget to the sidebar of AjaxNinja but I thought it might make the site look less professional. What do you make of it?

shor

Found your blog via Avinash and I'm loving the style, content and everything else about it.

Google (and yourself) understand that those who can 1) glean nuggets of insight out of mountains of data and 2) turn these nuggets into simple, actionable items will be the superstars of the web 2.0, 2.5, 3.0-to-infinity industry.

The other big boys are already aboard the analytics gravy train but are moving much slower (as usual).

John Clinebell

Hey, great post. It's absurd that Google's competition is letting them basically dig a grave and throw them in it when it comes to search marketing. Actually, they are helping dig the grave by not investing in what's obviously going to improve ROI the most; effective metrics analysis tools.

Now granted, Google Analytics isn't the simplest or most accurate thing to use, but it is pretty damned easy to pick up if you know Adwords well. The learning curve is practically non-existent if you know all the terminology already.

It's my opinion that those who aren't familiar with the intricacies of search marketing don't really have much business interpreting metrics anyways. Leave that to the professionals! And as much as Google wants Joe "I passed high school with a D-" Smith to be able to run a highly profitable campaign on his own, they realize that the top ROI can only be achieved with professional consultants who know what ads, targeted keywords, and landing pages work.. in other words, I'm not sweating my job security.

Zack

Great article, Dave!

Hjortholm

Yep, google surely got a solid land grab on the stat frontline , they also grabbed gapminder and it's trendanalyzer software in march 2007 - http://tinyurl.com/ytalds

Malapropist

"I can shoot with my left hand, I can shoot with my right hand, I'm amphibious."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malapropism#From_radio.2C_film.2C_and_television

Yishan

Dave, it's "I resent that remark," not "I resemble that remark."

Jeff Wang

Nice post. Wow, didn't realize that how much power Google has in metrics ..

todd sawicki

Great post Dave. Glad to see our grokking at the web analytics summit went somewhere! As we've chatted - we're kindred spirits on this topic but I've got more thoughts on the topic from is google the advertising OS to lock-in (http://www.sawickipedia.com/blog/2007/08/03/mcclure-google-metrics-advertising-os-and-lock-in/). Good stuff to chat about next week when you are up in Seattle.

BeachBum

Wow, this looks like a doctoral thesis. Great work putting all this info together. I agree that Google is out to own the internet and the others (Yahoo & MSN) are just waiting for Google to fall apart.

BeachBum

Scott Rafer

Pssst, Dave. Mashery for web services analytics?

Bryan Eisenberg

Don't forget Google Checkout which helps Google close the loop between the searches and conversions to sale.

Shripriya

Dave, it is actually not accurate that eBay doesn't have metrics. If you are a seller, there are a whole bunch of tools (Selling Manager, SM Pro etc. etc.) that offer analytics. In fact, I think there is a new tool solely focused on analytics. And they are damned good - what you listed, at what price, the cost, the margin, when it sold (day, time) etc. I think Store sellers get a lot of it free with the subscription.

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