Web Developers

Google Analytics Script Still Taken For Granted

Posted by on Apr 13, 2009 | 9 Comments

It’s like looking a gift horse in the mouth. That is what I think of those who individuals who are choosing not to take full advantages of Google’s Webmaster services. Because in the end, not using them is costing you site visitors and for some websites, that translates into lost revenue you will not be getting back.

And even knowing this, we still see 40% of the webmasters out there NOT using the new Google Analytics script even though it is free and could make a world of difference on the overall performance of any given website. Are we all doing so well that performance is just not an issue? Unless you are running a super-portal, I find this highly doubtful.

Better tracking, stronger understanding of visitor behavior, the list goes on. I mean come on, how hard is is really to swap one older script for the new one? After all, it’s not like you have to write it from scratch!

  • http://lockergnome.com/bradleybradwell bradleybradwell

    As the saying goes…. If you’re not on Google you’re not “really” on the internet.

  • http://dynno.com Imad jomaa

    Forget Google Analytics, http://getclicky.com has a load more of features and it’s free. Google isn’t the solution to everything, and if you agree with bradleybradwell . you haven’t been on the web enough to accept other solutions that are far more intuitive.

  • http://www.chris-wallace.com Chris Wallace

    Do you work for the Google Analytics team or did they pay you to write that post?

  • http://www.davidkaneda.com/ David Kaneda

    I disagree. Analytics has to do with metrics and review, which I really wouldn’t qualify under “Performance”. In terms of page performance, Analytics out-weighs competitors like Mint (haveamint.com) by over 15kb, and doesn’t necessarily provide much more useful info.

  • http://www.psdsession.com Paul

    I think in my case it’s because I run analytics on over 30 websites.. so it’s a matter of finding time to see which ones are old and which ones aren’t.. lol

    - paul

  • http://www.matthartley.com Matt Hartley

    Wallace: No, it was a rising article that was mentioned in this post, that is the motivation – sorry, not tinfoil helmets here folks. ;)

  • http://www.thecodecave.com Brian Layman

    I don’t usually make negative comments on posts but this article is flawed in several ways. Most glaringly you misquote another article.

    Your article says that “40% of the webmasters out there NOT using the new Google Analytics script” and that statement is completely baseless given the article you link to as your source.

    Your source article’s facts can be summarized as “In polling the top 10K sites, among those that use Urchin or GA, 40% use urchin.” This is not what you said.

    What you said is wrong. Omniture is considered by many to be THE source for accurate numbers by advertising agencies and many of those top 10k sites are paying several 10s of thousands per yer for the privilege of having Omniture numbers available to provide the ad agencies. Additionally I would suspect that there are other tracking systems beyond the three we’ve mentioned. In short, that 40% has nothing to do with the total number of webmasters that use Urchin. Out of the 10K sites looked at, 6 could use GA and 4 use Urchin and the ratio would still be 40%.

    Additionally, your source article goes off track by stating that those sites use a legacy Urchin.js, but shows nothing to back this up. It appears that they simply looked for urchin.js and assumed that the site was therefore using some outdated script that predated Google Analytics. A major release 3 months ago and a maintenence release just over 2 weeks ago prove that Urchin is still maintained developed and SOLD.

    Perhaps it is the case that it fits some particular situations better than GA. For example, Urchin has a datacenter mode that allows various administrative priviledges to be assign (or not) that’s not available in GA AFAIK. There may be very good reasons for a particular organization to choose Urchin over GA.

    Betting that the ppl that run the top 10k websites in the world made an oopsie and never realized that GA was out there, or are simply doing so well that we don’t care, seems foolish.

  • http://www.thecodecave.com Brian Layman

    Actually this line from your source article:
    “First of all, a full 50% of the top 10,000 sites on the Internet use [some form of] Google Analytics.”

    Means that your statement of “40% of the webmasters out there NOT using the new Google Analytics script ” should actually be more like: “In a survey of the top 10K, we see 70% of the webmasters out there NOT using the new Google Analytics script ”

    3000 use GA
    2000 use Urchin
    5000 use something else

    Don’t get me wrong, I agree with the thrust of your post. GA is great. I also think that more people should use it. Just triple check your article’s wording before you post it.