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Topic: Banking

Google rips off the analytics band-aid

Summary: Today Google made two separate announcements that are somewhat related -- both basically made Google Analytics less accurate for webmasters who use the tool to keep tabs on their traffic. I'm wondering if the two announcements were coincidences, or if Google decided to group them together to avoid as much pain as possible.

Garett Rogers

By Garett Rogers for Googling Google |

Today Google made two separate announcements that are somewhat related -- both basically made Google Analytics less accurate for webmasters who use the tool to keep tabs on their traffic. I'm wondering if the two announcements were coincidences, or if Google decided to group them together to avoid as much pain as possible.

The first announcement was that they released a tool which lets users be completely invisible to Google Analytics -- traffic from these users will not count toward the website statistics. Great for users, kinda crappy for website owners.

Google also recently decided to turn on the ability for people to use Google Search with SSL. Doing this basically encrypts the user session, making it nearly impossible for people sniffing wifi to spy on your searches. What's wrong with this? Well, referral information for anyone who opts to use this service will not report properly in Google Analytics -- another problem for webmasters who like to know which searches people used to find their website.

It's kind of a double edged sword for Google, and it will be interesting to see how webmasters react to the change. On one hand, you have angry users that want Google to handle their personal information better, and on the other, you have website owners that are addicted to their stats.

What do you think of these changes that were announced? Which side of the fence are you on?

Topics: Banking, Google

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7 comments
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  • RE: Google rips off the analytics band-aid

    Um.. Maybe I'm missing something, but making a google search using ssl will have no bearing on what is reported to google analytics... The whole point of ssl is to encrypt the data going to and from the web server/client. Once it gets to the server/client it will deencrypt the data and everything will proceed as normal.. Including any reporting to google analytics.
    explorer5
    Reply Vote

  • RE: Google rips off the analytics band-aid

    hi explorer5. unfortunately that is not the case. SSL connections prevent the referrer information being passed through to Google analytics, or indeed any other analytics package a website may be using. This results in all traffic coming from a Google encrypted search to show as direct traffic in your analytics reports. This severely limits segmentation and keyword analysis of visitors to your site.
    andeedee
    Reply Vote

  • RE: Google rips off the analytics band-aid

    Wow, questions abound:<br>1. So an SSL search by a visitor will show up in Analytics as a direct traffic visit? I understand that key word info will be lost, but does this mean I won't even know they came from Google search?<br>2. Does the Google Analytics Opt-out Browser Add-on work 100% of the time for people that download it, or do they get to toggle their "invisibility cloak" on and off?<br>3. Do either of these tools effect the reporting of keywords and traffic from Google AdWords?
    schaffnit
    Reply Vote

  • RE: Google rips off the analytics band-aid

    The one upside to being invisible to Analytics is that I would make myself invisible when I am creating or making changes to websites that am working on, which won't cause a peak of activity when it is just me going to the page or refreshing the page a million times until it looks right.
    nanh
    Reply Vote

  • RE: Google rips off the analytics band-aid

    NoScript and similar tools already allow people to be "invisible" to Google Analytics.
    HENpp
    Reply Vote

  • RE: Google rips off the analytics band-aid

    I think this is to preempt privacy complaints given Google and Facebook being attacked quite a bit for privacy issues (and maybe as a side effect to drive people to their blocker instead of using a blocking tool which also blocks their ads).
    brettz9
    Reply Vote

  • RE: Google rips off the analytics band-aid

    This is truly a double edged sword and it raises serious concerns about the value of GA if the underlying data is now inaccurate.

    My websites operate with Google Analytics (GA). A foundational requirement of any analytics package is to gather accurate analytical data. Up until now GA has been doing so and has built on top of that foundation some great tools for consuming that data. That is the value proposition of GA and it has been a good one - it convinced me.

    However if these changes mean that GA is not gathering accurate data, or omitting certain data then the foundation has a serious flaw. And if the foundation is flawed then all of the great data consumption features that are built on top of it are for naught.

    I understand and support people's desire to take an active role in managing their digital breadcrumb trail and I also support Google's efforts to help people do so by making tools available for free. But Google cannot at the same time promote an analytics package that has fundamental flaws in its foundation.

    Of course as of today (and probably for some time to come) most users will not be availing themselves of these new functions. Therefore the majority of the analytical data that I get will still be accurate with a small margin of error due to the few users who will be availing themselves of these functions. However if these functions become more popular and Google does not fix the foundational flaw in GA that they have introduced with these announcements, then I will be forced to stop using GA. I will be sad to do so as I really like the GA tools, but if my underlying data is inaccurate than all the great GA user interface is useless to me.

    Google, please fix the foundational flaws in GA that you have introduced with these announcements and please fix it soon?
    aslam_nathoo
    Reply Vote
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