Are Your Analytics Accurate? no comments
© Search Engine People Blog
Analytics is the magic word in Search Engine Optimization (SEO). Everything you do teeters on what kind of analytics your strategies bring in. Analytics tracks all the clicks on your website: where they came from, who did them, how long they stayed on your site… all that numerical data we use to measure how well an online campaign does.
There are many types of analytics tools out there, from Google Analytics to hosting software to general tracking programs you can purchase. The point is, that there always seems to be discrepancies. Even comparing Google AdSense with Analytics can show differences as high as 10-20%.
First we'd like to point out that discrepancies should not make you panic. Find more than one program and use the average of unique hits for your traffic. Also realize that hits does not measure engagement and that clicks isn't a good way to measure how productive you're being.
But if you are worried about those discrepancies here are some common reasons why they happen:
1. The big picture. Make sure your analytics are tracking the same things. Is one program tracking just your main navigation or all pages? Look at the whole program and what its supposed to measure precisely.
2. Compare apples to apples. Check yourself for errors first. Are you comparing unique and all hits instead of unique to unique? Every tracking program works a little differently so make sure to be reading the correct number.
3. Weeding out the bad guys. Sometimes Google and more sophisticated programs will catch spiders and robots when they hit your site. These programs won't count this fake traffic in your stats.
4. Length of page view. Google takes a certain amount of time before it registers a page view. If a person lands on your site for only half a second and clicks back, Google might not register it while another program will.
How do you make sure your analytics are accurate?