Saturday, January 26, 2013

4 Problems with Google Analytics

Working on a project with team Dragonfly, we realized that Google Analytics doesn't provide real-time reporting – that sucks….  We wanted to watch the real time effects on a website after we sent out several social media campaigns, but the data just didn’t populate fast enough to give us the real time info we desired.

First of all, let me say that Google provides some great ‘free’ resources in its analytics package – I use the word free loosely since they own all of your data.  The analytics they provide can truly offer some meaningful insights, but it is not a crystal ball.   I have to think that part of Google’s strategy is reliant upon us being ignorant and them being all-knowing. That’s how they can charge us for the ‘Enterprise’ version of their software.

I have to say that Google is great – I don’t want to be that guy who wins a free Ferrari, but complains because it’s not the right color.  That being said, here are some common frustrations with this popular tool:

  ‘Not Provided’

This is really irksome as of late.  Just over a year ago, Google began encrypting search result for signed-in Google users as a means of protecting their information.  I read a blog recently that claimed that 39% of Google searches now show as ‘Not Provided’.    64% of companies will see 30-50% of their traffic come through as ‘Not Provided’. 


This is a big issue for many people who are looking to optimize the SEO on their website.  It is even more frustrating to think that Google has the information for the traffic – they just withhold it for the privacy of their clients… unless you pay them for the information (They don’t withhold the traffic sources for PPC.)

    No clear action given from data

Although great information can be gleaned from Google Analytics, Google doesn’t actually provide any direction.  So, unfortunately, that means that in interpreting the data one major issue is simply a PEBKAC (Problem Exists Between Keyboard And Chair).


One stat that most people look at on their website is the bounce rate, but the meaning is not uniform for all websites – some understanding of how it affects your website is required before you know what is good, and what is bad. 


Blog – a bounce from a blog may not necessarily be a bad thing.  The goal of a blog is to get people to read the page… and hopefully get them to return the next time there is a new post.  So a visitor coming to your blog, reading it, and leaving, is not necessarily cause for alarm.

Service business – With many service businesses, a phone call is what we are actually trying to generate from your website.  Unfortunately, many of the Analytics tools don’t show a phone call generated online as anything more than a bounced visitor – even though they may have called your store and order a Million dollars’ worth of work done.

E-commerce site – A bounce on this type of website is something that means a lot more.  In order to make a profit someone will have to select and item, put in shipping and billing information, and then confirm the order.   In this case a high bounce rate means there is some room to improve the content and/ or user experience to ensure more interaction, and more sales.

    Inaccurate keyword reports

If a visitor leaves a page open for a long time, it may be recorded as multiple entries for that visitor’s keyword.  This can cause a spike in keyword reports and throw off the data.   This is more prevalent with the increase of tabbed browsing from many of the browsers these days.  Although with an increase in traffic, individual keyword spikes will become less noticeable.

    No tracking of Spiders

When a Spider  or Web Crawler comes to your website, it doesn’t activate the Java script, so you cannot get any data on their activity.  This is most unfortunate, because it would be great to see how your website is being viewed by these spiders for SEO purposes.

It’s no secret that Google keeps its search algorithms secret, but it seems that they are doing several other things intentionally to make website optimization difficult…  Or at least it will seem more like black magic than science.  If they were to give information on ‘Not Provided’ and allow insights for SEO best practices, it would level the playing field and let anyone willing to put forth the effort improve their search rankings.

Where does Google Analytics fall short for your needs?

14 comments:

  1. I have an SEO blog and virtually none of my keyword data is given to me. Mainly because MOST of my readers are logged into Google. As more and more people adopt Google products I get less and less keyword data.

    I rely on traffic from social sources and pay less attention the keywords anymore. It's frustrating not to get that data. I sometime use Google Webmaster Tools to get an idea of what keywords I am ranking for, but that is by no means an exact measuring stick of where my site ranks in search engines.

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    1. To give another indication of what natural keywords people are coming in of, use Google Analytics to see what landing page they're going to. More times than not, understanding what pages they're landing on will give a rough indication of what search terms they're using. Not ideal of course, but another way you can get around the annoying "Not Keywords Provided" issue.

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  2. I agree with a lot of what you've posted. And the truth is that the https:// google search is killing all analytics providers, not just google. And the interesting part is that google is probably fully aware of the searches which are taking place, but they're not allowed to post the results without anti-competition lawsuits filing their inbox. Let me plug my company, comScore (Digital Analytix product), which does allow for running reports on spider activity (even if they're not included by default). Of course, that is probably a likely feature for many paid products, but we cover the real time aspect as well as live segmentation and filtering. As far as actionable insights go, I think that's a tough one for any tool to nail down, but it would be great to see some breakthroughs in automated insights. Nice post!

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    1. Thanks for the input - A lot of this content is coming from a non-expert.

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    2. Yes good point Travis around it killing all analytics providers, not just Google. I would think someone in their infinite wisdom at Google decided to implement this change so that users can 'trust Google more' - and had no vision of how it'd affect Analytics. I wonder if Google will provide the data to you if you're a Google Analytics Premium subscriber??

      And robbKOFOED, two things - with regards to your second point around no action given from data, that's why "Digital Analytics" as a profession exists, turning data into information/insights. :)

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  3. Thanks for the shout-out to Team Dragonfly! My biggest struggle with GA is having first learned SiteCatalyst I have to try to unlearn a bunch of stuff first.

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  4. regardless of how good one thinks data or analysis of data is, one still needs to understand the underlying data for fully appreciate the answer.

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  5. I did not know about spiders not registering on GA. Wonder if Adobe's product would do that for you. Cook details!

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  6. Great info and great idea of highlighting the weaknesses that not many people probably know about. Very interesting part about the keyword reports. Almost everyone seems to do tabbed browsing so its crazy to realize the reports can't handle it accurately.

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  7. Hey thanks for cluing us in on the encryption for key words on signed in users on Google. I've been wondering why those key words were unavailable for quite some time, but never really took the time to figure out why. Thanks for sharing!

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  8. Great insight! I also didn't know why the keywords were coming up as "not provided." Interesting that Google can keep information from companies that use keywords to optimize the search-ability of their site. Who decides if a website is worth coming up in the top 10 search results: Google or the general population?

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  9. I am confused by the main focus of your blog claiming Google does not offer real time data. Are you aware of Google real time analytics? It allows you to watch live updates of users coming to your site following a email or social launch. Does it not meet your needs or were you not aware of its existence?

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  10. Being VERY new to analytics, I thingk Google is a good place for the basics for sure, yet I can see why these things woul dbe important

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  11. Nice article. I think Google also realized these problem and included third-party applications. You can go to GA site and check out these tools. Some are interesting, some are scary, others are really scary.

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