Google Analytics
Encyclopedia
Google Analytics is a free service offered by Google
that generates detailed statistics
about the visitors to a website
. The product is aimed at marketers
as opposed to webmasters and technologists from which the industry of web analytics
originally grew. It is the most widely used website statistics service, currently in use on around 57% of the 10,000 most popular websites. Another market share analysis claims that Google Analytics is used at around 49.95% of the top 1,000,000 websites (as currently ranked by Alexa
).
GA can track visitors from all referrers, including search engines, display advertising, pay-per-click networks, e-mail marketing
and digital collateral such as links within PDF documents.
Integrated with AdWords
, users can review online campaigns by tracking landing page quality and conversions (goals). Goals might include sales, lead generation, viewing a specific page, or downloading a particular file. These can also be monetized. By using GA, marketers can determine which ads are performing, and which are not, providing the information to optimise or cull campaigns.
GA's approach is to show high level dashboard
-type data for the casual user, and more in-depth data further into the report set. Through the use of GA analysis, poor performing pages can be identified using techniques such as funnel visualization, where visitors came from (referrers), how long they stayed and their geographical position. It also provides more advanced features, including custom visitor segmentation.
Users can officially add up to 50 site profiles. Each profile generally corresponds to one website
. It is limited to sites which have a traffic of fewer than 5 million pageviews per month (roughly 2 pageviews per second), unless the site is linked to an AdWords
campaign.
's analytics system, Urchin on Demand
(Google acquired Urchin Software Corp. in April 2005). The system also brings ideas from Adaptive Path, whose product, Measure Map, was acquired and used in the redesign of Google Analytics in 2006. Google still sells the standalone installable Urchin software through a network of value-added reseller
s and Urchin is at version 7 as of 6/20/11. The latest version of the tracking code is known as the Asynchronous Tracking Code, which Google claims, is significantly more sensitive and accurate, and is able to track even very short activities on the website.
The Google-branded version was rolled out in November 2005 to anyone who wished to sign up. However due to extremely high demand for the service, new sign-ups were suspended only a week later. As capacity was added to the system, Google began using a lottery
-type invitation-code model. Prior to August 2006 Google was sending out batches of invitation codes as server availability permitted; since mid-August 2006 the service has been fully available to all users – whether they use Google for advertising or not.
In April 2011, Google announced the availability of a new version of Google Analytics, featuring multiple dashboards, more options of custom reports and a new interface design. This version was later updated with some other features such as real-time analytics and goal flow charts , .
code that the user adds onto every page of his or her website. This code collects visitor data and sends it to a Google data collection server
as part of a request for a web beacon.
To function, the GATC loads a larger Javascript file from the Google webserver and then sets variables with the user's account number. The larger file (currently known as ga.js) is typically 18 KB in size and is only downloaded once at the start of the visit as it will be cached throughout the session. As all websites that implement GA with the ga.js code are using the same master file from Google, a visitor that has previously visited any other website with this code implemented, will also have the file cached on their machine. The result is that the page overhead of including the GATC on web pages is kept to a minimum.
In addition to transmitting information to a Google server, the GATC sets first party cookies
on each visitor's computer. This is used to store anonymous information such as whether the visitor has been to the site before (new or returning visitor), what is the timestamp
of the current visit and what was the referrer site or campaign the visitor came from e.g. search engine, keywords, banner or email.
However, many ad filtering
programs and extensions (such as Firefox's Adblock
and NoScript
) can block the GATC. This prevents some traffic and users from being tracked, and leads to holes in the collected data. Also, privacy networks like Tor
will mask the user's actual location and present inaccurate geographical data. Some users do not have JavaScript-enabled/capable browsers or turn this feature off. However, these limitations are considered small – affecting only a small percentage of visits.
The largest potential impact on data accuracy comes from users deleting or blocking Google Analytics cookies. Without cookies being set, GA cannot collect data. Any individual web user can block or delete cookies resulting in the data loss of those visits for GA users. Website owners can encourage users not to disable cookies, for example by making visitors more comfortable using the site through posting a privacy policy
.
These limitations affect all on-site web analytics
tools that collect on-site visitor data using page tags. That is, the small piece of code (usually JavaScript
) that acts as a beacon to collect visitor data.
Another limitation of GA for large websites is the use of sampling
in the generation of many of its reports. To reduce the load on their servers and to provide users with a relatively quick response for their query, GA limits reports to 500,000 randomly sampled visits at the profile level for its calculations. While margins of error are indicated for the visits metric, margins of error are not provided for any other metrics in the GA reports. For small segments of data, the margin of error can be very large.
.
Google has also released a browser plugin that turns off data about a page visit being sent to Google.
Since this plug-in is produced and distributed by Google itself, it has met much discussion and criticism. Furthermore, the realisation of Google scripts tracking user behaviours has spawned the production of multiple, often open-source, browser plug-ins. These plug-ins offer the user a choice, whether to allow for example Google Analytics to track his/her activities.
It has been anecdotally reported that behind proxy servers and multiple firewalls that errors can occur changing time stamps and registering invalid searches.
Webmasters who seek to mitigate Google Analytics specific privacy issues can employ a number of alternatives having their backends hosted on their own machines. An example product from Google itself is Urchin Software..
) ordered by popularity, as reported by (now defunct) BackendBattles.com
Google
Google Inc. is an American multinational public corporation invested in Internet search, cloud computing, and advertising technologies. Google hosts and develops a number of Internet-based services and products, and generates profit primarily from advertising through its AdWords program...
that generates detailed statistics
Statistics
Statistics is the study of the collection, organization, analysis, and interpretation of data. It deals with all aspects of this, including the planning of data collection in terms of the design of surveys and experiments....
about the visitors to a website
Website
A website, also written as Web site, web site, or simply site, is a collection of related web pages containing images, videos or other digital assets. A website is hosted on at least one web server, accessible via a network such as the Internet or a private local area network through an Internet...
. The product is aimed at marketers
Internet marketing
Internet marketing, also known as digital marketing, web marketing, online marketing, search marketing or e-marketing, is referred to as the marketing of products or services over the Internet...
as opposed to webmasters and technologists from which the industry of web analytics
Web analytics
Web analytics is the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of internet data for purposes of understanding and optimizing web usage....
originally grew. It is the most widely used website statistics service, currently in use on around 57% of the 10,000 most popular websites. Another market share analysis claims that Google Analytics is used at around 49.95% of the top 1,000,000 websites (as currently ranked by Alexa
Alexa Internet
Alexa Internet, Inc. is a California-based subsidiary company of Amazon.com that is known for its toolbar and Web site. Once installed, the toolbar collects data on browsing behavior which is transmitted to the Web site where it is stored and analyzed and is the basis for the company's Web traffic...
).
GA can track visitors from all referrers, including search engines, display advertising, pay-per-click networks, e-mail marketing
E-mail marketing
Email marketing is a form of direct marketing which uses email as a means of communicating commercial or fund-raising messages to an audience. In its broadest sense, every email sent to a potential or current customer could be considered email marketing...
and digital collateral such as links within PDF documents.
Integrated with AdWords
AdWords
Google AdWords is Google's main advertising product and main source of revenue. Google's total advertising revenues were USD$28 billion in 2010. AdWords offers pay-per-click advertising, cost-per-thousand advertising, and site-targeted advertising for text, banner, and rich-media ads. The AdWords...
, users can review online campaigns by tracking landing page quality and conversions (goals). Goals might include sales, lead generation, viewing a specific page, or downloading a particular file. These can also be monetized. By using GA, marketers can determine which ads are performing, and which are not, providing the information to optimise or cull campaigns.
GA's approach is to show high level dashboard
Dashboard (business)
Dashboard provides at-a-glance views of key performance indicators relevant to a particular objective or business process...
-type data for the casual user, and more in-depth data further into the report set. Through the use of GA analysis, poor performing pages can be identified using techniques such as funnel visualization, where visitors came from (referrers), how long they stayed and their geographical position. It also provides more advanced features, including custom visitor segmentation.
Users can officially add up to 50 site profiles. Each profile generally corresponds to one website
Website
A website, also written as Web site, web site, or simply site, is a collection of related web pages containing images, videos or other digital assets. A website is hosted on at least one web server, accessible via a network such as the Internet or a private local area network through an Internet...
. It is limited to sites which have a traffic of fewer than 5 million pageviews per month (roughly 2 pageviews per second), unless the site is linked to an AdWords
AdWords
Google AdWords is Google's main advertising product and main source of revenue. Google's total advertising revenues were USD$28 billion in 2010. AdWords offers pay-per-click advertising, cost-per-thousand advertising, and site-targeted advertising for text, banner, and rich-media ads. The AdWords...
campaign.
History
Google's service was developed from Urchin Software CorporationUrchin Software Corporation
Urchin Software Corporation was a web analytics company based in Southern California. In April 2005, the company was purchased by Google.-Corporate history:Urchin was founded by Paul Muret and Scott Crosby in December 1995 in San Diego, California...
's analytics system, Urchin on Demand
Urchin (software)
Urchin is a web statistics analysis program developed by Urchin Software Corporation. Urchin is used to analyze web server log file content and display the traffic information on that website based upon the log data....
(Google acquired Urchin Software Corp. in April 2005). The system also brings ideas from Adaptive Path, whose product, Measure Map, was acquired and used in the redesign of Google Analytics in 2006. Google still sells the standalone installable Urchin software through a network of value-added reseller
Value-added reseller
A value-added reseller is a company that adds features or services to an existing product, then resells it as an integrated product or complete "turn-key" solution...
s and Urchin is at version 7 as of 6/20/11. The latest version of the tracking code is known as the Asynchronous Tracking Code, which Google claims, is significantly more sensitive and accurate, and is able to track even very short activities on the website.
The Google-branded version was rolled out in November 2005 to anyone who wished to sign up. However due to extremely high demand for the service, new sign-ups were suspended only a week later. As capacity was added to the system, Google began using a lottery
Lottery
A lottery is a form of gambling which involves the drawing of lots for a prize.Lottery is outlawed by some governments, while others endorse it to the extent of organizing a national or state lottery. It is common to find some degree of regulation of lottery by governments...
-type invitation-code model. Prior to August 2006 Google was sending out batches of invitation codes as server availability permitted; since mid-August 2006 the service has been fully available to all users – whether they use Google for advertising or not.
In April 2011, Google announced the availability of a new version of Google Analytics, featuring multiple dashboards, more options of custom reports and a new interface design. This version was later updated with some other features such as real-time analytics and goal flow charts , .
Technology
Google Analytics is implemented by including what is known as a "page tag". This is referred to as the Google Analytics Tracking Code (GATC) and is a snippet of JavaScriptJavaScript
JavaScript is a prototype-based scripting language that is dynamic, weakly typed and has first-class functions. It is a multi-paradigm language, supporting object-oriented, imperative, and functional programming styles....
code that the user adds onto every page of his or her website. This code collects visitor data and sends it to a Google data collection server
Server (computing)
In the context of client-server architecture, a server is a computer program running to serve the requests of other programs, the "clients". Thus, the "server" performs some computational task on behalf of "clients"...
as part of a request for a web beacon.
To function, the GATC loads a larger Javascript file from the Google webserver and then sets variables with the user's account number. The larger file (currently known as ga.js) is typically 18 KB in size and is only downloaded once at the start of the visit as it will be cached throughout the session. As all websites that implement GA with the ga.js code are using the same master file from Google, a visitor that has previously visited any other website with this code implemented, will also have the file cached on their machine. The result is that the page overhead of including the GATC on web pages is kept to a minimum.
In addition to transmitting information to a Google server, the GATC sets first party cookies
HTTP cookie
A cookie, also known as an HTTP cookie, web cookie, or browser cookie, is used for an origin website to send state information to a user's browser and for the browser to return the state information to the origin site...
on each visitor's computer. This is used to store anonymous information such as whether the visitor has been to the site before (new or returning visitor), what is the timestamp
Timestamp
A timestamp is a sequence of characters, denoting the date or time at which a certain event occurred. A timestamp is the time at which an event is recorded by a computer, not the time of the event itself...
of the current visit and what was the referrer site or campaign the visitor came from e.g. search engine, keywords, banner or email.
Limitations
Additionally to the JavaScript-based client-side version, the Google Analytics can also work with websites browsed from mobile phones by using the Google Analytics for Mobile package which contains server-side tracking code for mobile sites using PHP, JSP, ASP.NET, or Perl as their server-side language.However, many ad filtering
Ad filtering
Ad filtering or ad blocking is removing or altering advertising content in a webpage. Advertising can exist in a variety of forms including pictures, animations, text, or pop-up windows. More advanced filters allow fine-grained control of advertisements through features such as blacklists,...
programs and extensions (such as Firefox's Adblock
Adblock
Adblock Plus is a content-filtering extension for Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome web browsers. ABP, a forked version of Adblock, allows users to prevent page elements, such as advertisements, from being downloaded and displayed.-How it works:Like Mozilla's built-in image blocker, Adblock...
and NoScript
NoScript
NoScript is a free and open-source extension for Mozilla Firefox, SeaMonkey, and other Mozilla-based web browsers, created and actively maintained by Giorgio Maone, an Italian software developer and member of the Mozilla Security Group...
) can block the GATC. This prevents some traffic and users from being tracked, and leads to holes in the collected data. Also, privacy networks like Tor
Tor (anonymity network)
Tor is a system intended to enable online anonymity. Tor client software routes Internet traffic through a worldwide volunteer network of servers in order to conceal a user's location or usage from someone conducting network surveillance or traffic analysis...
will mask the user's actual location and present inaccurate geographical data. Some users do not have JavaScript-enabled/capable browsers or turn this feature off. However, these limitations are considered small – affecting only a small percentage of visits.
The largest potential impact on data accuracy comes from users deleting or blocking Google Analytics cookies. Without cookies being set, GA cannot collect data. Any individual web user can block or delete cookies resulting in the data loss of those visits for GA users. Website owners can encourage users not to disable cookies, for example by making visitors more comfortable using the site through posting a privacy policy
Privacy policy
Privacy policy is a statement or a legal document that discloses some or all of the ways a party gathers, uses, discloses and manages a customer or client's data...
.
These limitations affect all on-site web analytics
Web analytics
Web analytics is the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of internet data for purposes of understanding and optimizing web usage....
tools that collect on-site visitor data using page tags. That is, the small piece of code (usually JavaScript
JavaScript
JavaScript is a prototype-based scripting language that is dynamic, weakly typed and has first-class functions. It is a multi-paradigm language, supporting object-oriented, imperative, and functional programming styles....
) that acts as a beacon to collect visitor data.
Another limitation of GA for large websites is the use of sampling
Sampling (statistics)
In statistics and survey methodology, sampling is concerned with the selection of a subset of individuals from within a population to estimate characteristics of the whole population....
in the generation of many of its reports. To reduce the load on their servers and to provide users with a relatively quick response for their query, GA limits reports to 500,000 randomly sampled visits at the profile level for its calculations. While margins of error are indicated for the visits metric, margins of error are not provided for any other metrics in the GA reports. For small segments of data, the margin of error can be very large.
Performance concerns
There have been several online discussions about the impact on Google Analytics on site performance. However, Google introduced asynchronous JavaScript code in December 2009 to reduce the risk of slowing the loading of pages tagged with the ga.js script.Privacy issues
Due to its ubiquity, Google Analytics raises many privacy concerns. Whenever someone visits a website that uses Google Analytics, Google tracks that visit via the user's IP addressIP address
An Internet Protocol address is a numerical label assigned to each device participating in a computer network that uses the Internet Protocol for communication. An IP address serves two principal functions: host or network interface identification and location addressing...
.
Google has also released a browser plugin that turns off data about a page visit being sent to Google.
Since this plug-in is produced and distributed by Google itself, it has met much discussion and criticism. Furthermore, the realisation of Google scripts tracking user behaviours has spawned the production of multiple, often open-source, browser plug-ins. These plug-ins offer the user a choice, whether to allow for example Google Analytics to track his/her activities.
It has been anecdotally reported that behind proxy servers and multiple firewalls that errors can occur changing time stamps and registering invalid searches.
Webmasters who seek to mitigate Google Analytics specific privacy issues can employ a number of alternatives having their backends hosted on their own machines. An example product from Google itself is Urchin Software..
High profile sites using Google Analytics
Google Analytics is used by 57% of the 10,000 most popular websites (as ranked by Alexa InternetAlexa Internet
Alexa Internet, Inc. is a California-based subsidiary company of Amazon.com that is known for its toolbar and Web site. Once installed, the toolbar collects data on browsing behavior which is transmitted to the Web site where it is stored and analyzed and is the basis for the company's Web traffic...
) ordered by popularity, as reported by (now defunct) BackendBattles.com
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API Proliferation
The Google Analytics API has been utilized by third parties to build custom reporting tools. Many such tools exist through a number of mediums. One was built to run on iOS (Apple) devices and is featured in Apple's app store see: Analytics by Net Conversion http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/analytics-by-net-conversion/id421164239?mt=8See also
- Web analyticsWeb analyticsWeb analytics is the measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of internet data for purposes of understanding and optimizing web usage....
and web analytics bibliography - List of web analytics software
External links
- Google web site
- Google Analytics web site
- Slide showing current enterprise users
- Google Analytics Book
- Google Analytics Email Alerts via the API
- Google Analytics for Wordpress plugin
- Google Analytics Visits, displays Google Analytics results on Wordpress sites
- How to install Google Analytics on a large static HTML website
- Google Analytics Meetup Group in London, UK
- Google Analytics Dashboard