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Sergei KrylovWeb Analytics Is In DetailsSergei Krylov | 2009-07-09 Devil is in details – this is about web analytics. Here comes the illustration: I just came across interesting post (read them all just after you read my post – this way will save you a lot of time and puzzle) Does Google Analytics overstate the value of search? by Paul Cook, in which he refers to original post by Francois Derbaix in Spanish (most of discussion takes place here, see translation) or in French (see translation). What that issue is all about? It is all about details and how important they are in web analytics. Web analytics is everything but trivial, simple, clear, despite it may deceptively look as such. Essentially, as it happens, people misunderstood the intricate tiny little details of the way web analytics tools work. Myriad of theories (sure including conspiracy), calls for remedies and lengthy discussions (in multiple languages) were born immediately and spread like fire. That is natural, when everyone is in the same bot – everyone depends on just a single mass commodity web analytics tool and understandably feels uncomfortable and paranoid about that. Some people wrongly decided that Google has intentionally set up its cookie window to 6 months to "impose conditions that make its services look good when you analyse your site traffic". Although this specific conclusion cannot entirely be rulled out (hey, its a competitive world after all), I can assure you that premiss is entirely wrong. The reason is very simple. Even if we assume that the first click gets attribution (which is VERY unreasonable assumption, see below), the 6 month cookie would same way result in sticky attribution for ABSOLUTELY ANY campaign, not only Google. So, it is not likely to be a conspiracy from Google. Why the assumption of the first click attribution is wrong? Because otherwise web analytics reports would portray 6 month old source campaigns in current reports, making web analytics information completely stale. No reasonable tool would use first click attribution in this case. As it was later explained, GA uses last click attribution policy. What about TrackSite, you may ask? TrackSite, on the other hand, goes further and uses all clicks attribution policy, so that no data is lost at all, neither old nor recent. The most interesting thing about this discussion is how starting from wrong premiss people have come to absolutely right conclusions! Let me quote some pearls and diamonds of wisdom from that nice discussion: "... data has to be reliable, and as you say, you need to understand what assumptions are in there... check the quality of your own website metrics and customer data..." "... implementation of analytics can give you a good overview as to site activity, but making sure all aspects are fully understood is critical if it is being used in part to make business decisions..." "... All web analytics packages aggregate visitors, sessionisation, differently, have different cookie and referral lengths, and do things slightly different..." This is another way to say that there is no single perfect, one-size-fits-all solution. "... I see answering these sort of questions as the value a good digital consultant can provide..." "Google Analytics is not a neutral indicator. It is an interested party." This is right regardless of the issue debated. "...I think it is important not to rely on Analytics as the only measure of your traffic..." "... Appreciate this post as I have just kick started the process of testing other Analytical packages on some of my sites..." In sum people have come to absolutely right conclusions:
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