Analytics/Stats Tools

[Kleineganz]

As a web analyst myself I'm always interested in what other folks use for their analytics. I know most companies at a minimum use Google Analytics or Piwik, since they are free. However I have personally had the chance to try or work with Adobe Analytics (formerly Omniture SiteCatalyst), IBM Unica and WebTrends. The only one I haven't touched yet is IBM Coremetrics and I'm looking forward to checking out IBM Watson Analytics when it becomes available (it will also be a "freemium" analytics tool, unlike their higher-end enterprise tools).

So what do you use to analyze your traffic on your site(s)?

 

[Neverz]

Most of us here will have only worked with Google Analytics. I am in the same boat however I have written some basic scripts to parse apache log files to make real-time reports for various projects. I'd love to learn more about Google Analytics as it appears to change every time I have to set something up. Any pointers on good 2014 hacks to get the most out of Google Analytics would be great.

 

[Kleineganz]

Most of us here will have only worked with Google Analytics. I am in the same boat however I have written some basic scripts to parse apache log files to make real-time reports for various projects. I'd love to learn more about Google Analytics as it appears to change every time I have to set something up. Any pointers on good 2014 hacks to get the most out of Google Analytics would be great.

Well I don't know about any hacks, but I do know how to use the tool fairly well. I have been putting up some tutorials on YouTube (let me know if you'd like me to share them), and I'm more than happy to answer questions about the tool. Can you tell me more about what you'd like to know?

 

[Ed321]

Sounds like a popular topic. I just got the Google Analytics on my website tonight. I was just wondering if there was something better out there and I see this is still commonly used.

I have been putting up some tutorials on YouTube (let me know if you'd like me to share them), and I'm more than happy to answer questions about the tool.

I don't know what the feeling is here about sharing links, but I think Kleineganz has some relevant content to share and I wouldn't mind seeing the YouTube links if a moderator approves.

Like Neverz mentioned, I have used some basic scripts before to pull up info from apache log files in a usable format too. I should know in a week or two if Google Analytics will give me what I need or if I need to start making some custom scripts again.

 

[Kleineganz]

Google Analytics has been making a lot of strides in terms of being able to compete with the "big boys" in Analytics (the big boys being Adobe, IBM and WebTrends). They have some data limits in place (naturally) and if you start hitting those limits you end up with sampled data, rather than actual data. Typically when a web site gets so much traffic to the point of Google needing to provide only sampled data, then I generally advise that organization to upgrade to an enterprise class tool. They could go with Google Analytics Premium, but if you're going to spend that much, I generally recommend considering one of the other tools. I'll admit, I have a bias for Adobe Analytics because it's the tool I'm most familiar with, and to be honest I do believe it's the best of the bunch out there right now.

 

[Kleineganz]

Well I didn't see any moderator say yes or no, but I'll take the chance and share my Analytics Tutorials link. I haven't posted one in awhile, but if there is any part of Google Analytics you'd like to learn more about, let me know and I'll be happy to film a tutorial on it (if there isn't one already up, so please browse through the current ones that I have).

http://youtube.com/EndressAnalytics

 

[xTinx]

We mostly use Google Analytics, although I'm not the one spearheading this project. We use it mainly because most of our sites have been optimized with Google algorithms in mind. We didn't take into consideration other search engines like Yahoo and Bing - a decision made by our CEO, who wanted to fully optimize our sites using the most convenient tools and methods available.

 

[Kleineganz]

We mostly use Google Analytics, although I'm not the one spearheading this project. We use it mainly because most of our sites have been optimized with Google algorithms in mind. We didn't take into consideration other search engines like Yahoo and Bing - a decision made by our CEO, who wanted to fully optimize our sites using the most convenient tools and methods available.

That's probably not a bad idea ... most of the sites I work with get about 90% of their search engine traffic from Google. They practically have a monopoly these days.

 

[OhioTom76]

One of the tempting reasons to work with Google Analytics is it's integration with Google AdWords and Google Webmaster tools, which is essentially lost if you go with any of the other tools mentioned here.

The only IBM service I've worked with for reporting would be Cognos. I had to manually join reporting from Cognos with our Google Adwords data to do any and all analysis on our pay per click advertising (same goes for Yahoo and Bing ppc traffic). It was a very tedious process, because the two have no built in connectivity. Cognos has no concept of AdWords and vice versa - they live in two separate worlds. The only thing our BI team did was set up a unique field which was a 10 digit code, which became a multi purpose "key" to join both sets of data. Sometimes it tied the data at the keyword level, other times it was used at the campaign level, and in some instances it was used at the ad level. I had to manually append these codes in Adwords and Bing using spreadsheets. It was like being an old fashioned telephone operator scrambling around to connect everyone's calls.

We tried to set up some automated bulk downloads from Google each day and importing the data into our data warehouses, then joining the data. It worked but the further along we got with this integration, the more and more difficulties we encountered. This was even more difficult due to the fact that we really don't have full visibility to how Google stores the data on their end, and keeping a running history of any changes that were being made, caused the reporting to blow up exponentially.

I haven't looked into Adobe's pay per click offerings since they acquired Efficient Frontier, but both Efficient Frontier and Omniture both offered stand alone bid management tools that were later brought under Adobe's wing, so I am not sure which won out on that front. EF was very "black box" and did not give us any insight to it's bid decision making, which made us uncomfortable going forward with them, and Omniture was too bogged down with bid rules that you had to create, so you spent more time managing and creating rules, that it was just as time consuming as managing your bids manually.

 

[Kleineganz]

One of the tempting reasons to work with Google Analytics is it's integration with Google AdWords and Google Webmaster tools, which is essentially lost if you go with any of the other tools mentioned here.

The only IBM service I've worked with for reporting would be Cognos. I had to manually join reporting from Cognos with our Google Adwords data to do any and all analysis on our pay per click advertising (same goes for Yahoo and Bing ppc traffic). It was a very tedious process, because the two have no built in connectivity. Cognos has no concept of AdWords and vice versa - they live in two separate worlds. The only thing our BI team did was set up a unique field which was a 10 digit code, which became a multi purpose "key" to join both sets of data. Sometimes it tied the data at the keyword level, other times it was used at the campaign level, and in some instances it was used at the ad level. I had to manually append these codes in Adwords and Bing using spreadsheets. It was like being an old fashioned telephone operator scrambling around to connect everyone's calls.

We tried to set up some automated bulk downloads from Google each day and importing the data into our data warehouses, then joining the data. It worked but the further along we got with this integration, the more and more difficulties we encountered. This was even more difficult due to the fact that we really don't have full visibility to how Google stores the data on their end, and keeping a running history of any changes that were being made, caused the reporting to blow up exponentially.

I haven't looked into Adobe's pay per click offerings since they acquired Efficient Frontier, but both Efficient Frontier and Omniture both offered stand alone bid management tools that were later brought under Adobe's wing, so I am not sure which won out on that front. EF was very "black box" and did not give us any insight to it's bid decision making, which made us uncomfortable going forward with them, and Omniture was too bogged down with bid rules that you had to create, so you spent more time managing and creating rules, that it was just as time consuming as managing your bids manually.

You make some excellent points, and I think that is exactly why most clients I work with that use Adobe Analytics, also use Google Analytics in parallel. Even Adobe acknowledges that most of their clients use Google and have built in Google Analytics compatibility into their Digital Tag Manager solution.

 

[AnkitaaGD]

One of my friends is a premier IBM business partner, so I got to watch IBM Watson Analytics in action the other day. And I was amazed. Google Analytics pales in comparison.

However, I can't afford IBM Watson Analytics so Google Analytics is IT for me. But I also use SEMRush and WebCEO. While SEMRush is free to a certain extent, WebCEO is completely free. I get regular reports from both about all my websites, and I find the information very very helpful. And just the other day I found StatCounter - it's free and it looks helpful too. I haven't used it but I've bookmarked it so that I can use it the next time I'm due for some analysis on my websites.