Lies, damn lies and statistics - Google Analytics ? why use it
Date: 30 January 2008

You may know the old saying, “Lies, damn lies and statistics” - Mark Twain

Well, that’s not totally true in the world of web statistics but there are certainly problems of interpretation and measurement. Big Brother Google has another option that maybe makes this less variable in nature.

Many of our clients have recently had web sites migrated to new servers by their hosting companies. This has either meant an interruption in their site’s stats tracking or a change of the statistics package used altogether, both causing big “blips” in traffic figures. Distressingly, this most often seems to be a big drop. Remember, in reality though, there are not less people looking, just they are being counted differently.

Without going into detail (which is incredibly complex and we suspect many hosting companies recording the stats do not even understand it), every stats package records differently. This is because of issues such as caching and whether unique or all visitors are tracked etc. Add to that external factors like Nortons Internet Security and Javascript redirects masking the identity of visitors, and it is almost impossible to know what is actually an accurate measure of your site’s traffic. Every stats package company will assure you that theirs is the most accurate one. The recent upgrade of some sites from Urchin 4 to Urchin 5 showed a drop in site traffic because the measurement method was apparently changed in the transition.

In order to be less dependent on the idiosyncrasies and interpretation of hosting companies’ stats servers, many site owners are moving towards using Google Analytics as an independent gauge of their site traffic.

We have always said that you can use stats as a comparative tool from one month to the next. That is only valid if nothing changes and servers are “up” all the time. If you load Google Analytics to your site you will almost certainly see a drop in traffic compared to your other stats packages. However, it is widely assumed (but probably not proven) that Google Analytics is not subject to the same stats server issues that hosting companies seem to have. It may therefore be a more reliable and independent method of measuring monthly trends. It also has some good features that allowing goal tracking (eg to a booking page) etc. Incidentally there is a big difference in stats figures between Urchin and Google Analytics even though Urchin is owned by Google!

How to load Google Analytics

In brief, to load Google Analytics to your site you need a Google Account, and to load some code to your web pages.

Go to Google at https://www.google.com/accounts/Login to create an account.

Then go to Google Analytics at http://www.google.com/analytics/ and follow the instructions. After you load your url(s) information Google will provide you with the tracking code for putting on your site. We suggest you use the “new tracking code” not the “legacy tracking code unless you also have Urchin.js installed.

The code needs to go just before the closing BODY tag on every page of your site. This may be in one place on your site if it uses page “includes” or may be every page of the site otherwise. Some content management systems (eg latest version of Thrive) have an easy way for the user to add this. Otherwise you will probably need the assistance of your web developer. They may charge you to do this – check how much first but it will depend how many pages they need to change (to change and upload one “include” throughout a site should be about a 10- 15 minute job)

If you need assistance on this, contact your web developer – they should be able to do it all for you including the sign-up.

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