Google: Is Free Better?
Reports from the Google Groups point fingers at Google for a lack of Google Analytics data for March 10th, 2008. I have also noticed a lack of graphical data in my own Analytics accounts. Some Analytics subscribers have been put out by the lack of visual data due to new implementations and publishing viral content.Is it worth using a free analytics product? Particularly Google Analytics.
Google Analytics has become an industry standard for small to large SEO and online marketing, and while Google is one of the most trusted online companies, it has hiccups. Any online service has the potential or a technical or mechanical failures. It is at that exact moment that your vice president, CIO, or marketing director want proof and results.
Excuses work, sometimes. “We had so many hits, the analytics software can’t keep up. It’ll be ready tomorrow.” Sometimes.
Trust and reliability are key factors when dealing with any vendor - technology based or not. Knowing they are there when there is a problem and correcting in in a timely fashion are bragging rights of any quality service. Google has addressed and is assessing the issues connected with their analytics.
I trust Google. I’ll continue too use their tools, both online and offline. I’ll tell my friends. But be sure to consider uptime, downtime, support, reporting, and most importantly, the repercussions of what can happen to your business the moment that theses services are not available.
One thing to keep in mind with paid vendor web analytics solutions is that where reliability may be better (although I haven’t had any trouble with Google Analytics downtime), there are two factors that can limit your possibilities:
1. If web analytics is secondary to your mission goals, paying for a solution is overkill
2. getting meaningful reports from large web analytics vendors is a nightmare and trust me, you’ll need a lot more excuses to explain why the vendor or one of its overpriced affiliated consultants haven’t been able to fix you up with what you need on time for you to meet your deadlines.
I agree 100%. An enterprise sized solution can often be too much for even a mid-sized business such as the university I work for. ROI and implementation were key factors in our decisions for statistics, analytics, and market research solutions.
Come to think about it, I never even really thought about analytics as an objective - but its true that analytics are directly related to almost every possible conversion, lead, sale or recruit. Analytics SHOULD be a priority - as should researching the right analytics solution.