Pro/Cons of JUST using Google Analytics
-
I find myself in a situation where I am having to defend why purely relying on just Google Analytics for site data i.e. exit pages, keywords, bounce rate etc... is not good practise.
So I thought/wondered if other people have come up against this.
What are the Pro and Cons for ONLY using Google Analytics for your site data....
-
Totally agree using more than one tool is about verifying data! This is the argument I am trying to make but making sure I come up with a good list of points....
What tool(s) do you use?
-
I find Google Analytics very useful for understanding traffic and conversion KPIs, for Adwords analysis, and management reporting. I took a liking to it when I started out because it so easy to set up and one can collect visitor data in a matter of minutes.
However, I do not use it exclusively because I'm not comfortable with relying on just Google. It's a reliable service but I do remember an issue that caused reports with data from April 2011 to return 0 visits. Some of my friends are also not at peace with Google having access to their site data. Using another site data tool alongside GA also allows one to verify the data need ed for reporting.
-
cause i check impressions and my link list with WMT and the GA for visits, time on site, and goal conversion.
If only they had 1 place to check all 5 lol....
but I'm sure if you wanted more macro data then the other features are useful.
-
Not arguing GA is not the best/good etc... It's about only using GA. You yourself admit you use WMA.... Why don't you just use GA?
-
Why would you not use Google Web Master tools as well? I personal opinion is that Google info is as good as it gets. While it may not show everything I feel it gives you a good idea of what Google feels is important and looks at on a frequent basis.
the only stats i really look at is time on site, visits, and goal conversion. maybe cause my site is till new but I dont really need any other fancy tools.
I personally also only use WMT and Analytics. Nothing seems to index as fast as Google... obviously
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
Massive unexplained organic traffic drop; disappeared from Google
Hi there,
Search Behavior | | katelynroberts
Our site has experienced a huge organic traffic drop, specifically from Google. The drop occurred on Feb 19 and I've got no clue why it happened. We have not made any significant changes to the website and it doesn't look like there was an algorithm update last week. We don't have any Google penalties or indexing issues noted, and the drop isn't specific to any particular segment/region/keyword. What am I missing? Any advice or insight is super duper appreciated. Our site is a Wordpress/WooCommerice e-commerce site with a blog and long-standing #1 ranks for keywords related to our main product offering. Screen Shot 2024-02-26 at 3.12.25 PM.png
Screen Shot 2024-02-26 at 3.07.52 PM.png0 -
Google Capital - Antitrust Conspiracy
I think we all have heard about Thumbtack breaking the rules w/ badges. Getting deindexed, then getting a 100M injection from Google capital and having the penalties removed: https://techcrunch.com/2014/08/20/service-marketplace-thumbtack-raises-100m-round-led-by-google-capital/ Our primary competitor is a different marketplace backed by Google Capital. Does anyone know of any low frequency products (reliant on SEO) backed Google Capital that has not won out within search? (i.e. is there any hope of competing against a low frequency marketplace after they have Google Capital backing?)
Search Behavior | | MarketGrowth0 -
Strategy for 301s/404s
Hi all, We receive a feed containing new products every morning, some products are removed and this obviously ends up in Webmaster as a 404. Is it fine to leave this as a 404 or would 301'ing the link be a better option? If we leave as a 404 we end up with thousands after a couple of month which scares me and makes finding actual 404s more difficult. Essentially, if lots of pages are being removed everyday, what's the best way of tackling these? Thanks!
Search Behavior | | HB170 -
Using https: Beyond the standard seo metrics
Hi All, I've been doing quite a bit of browsing around the topic of utilising https vs http when constructing urls and I wanted to know if anybody has research on the customer perception of a site where all urls are https. We originally used rel canonical tags to inform the browsers that the http and https were the same but we are considering stepping this up to having the http pages redirect to the https and I'm wondering how customers may react if they know that all pages are https. Anybody have insights on possible outcomes? Thanks, Tom
Search Behavior | | Tmon0 -
Google Instant Search? REALLY?! Why is this the result???
First, this is one I thought I would never ask, but: Could this be true? I had noticed my MacBook Pro was eating some power and wanted to see if I could optimize my settings so to take advantage what battery life was available. (I swear that is the truth). So, I am at a Starbucks on someone and typed into Google search bar the following query - Best way to conserve - and, received the following instant search results before I could type - power on a macbook pro I am not putting it here as I want you to ask yourself what came up. I have attached a screenshot. My colleague arrived and without prompting she retried and got the same. So I am curious: Do you get the same result and why do you think that result is so predominant? This is funny. efuts.png
Search Behavior | | RobertFisher2 -
Google Penalisation - Any help would be appreciated!
Hi,
Search Behavior | | ChrisHolgate
We’ve recently received a Google notification of unnatural linking along with a confirmation that we're being penalised. There were a few other sites that we owned that perhaps had too many links pointing to our main domain so we trimmed them down and submitted a reconsideration request and got the following back: "Dear site owner or webmaster of http://www.refreshcartridges.co.uk/,
We received a request from a site owner to reconsider http://www.refreshcartridges.co.uk/ for compliance with Google's Webmaster Guidelines.
We've reviewed your site and we still see links to your site that violate our quality guidelines.
Specifically, look for possibly artificial or unnatural links pointing to your site that could be intended to manipulate PageRank. Examples of unnatural linking could include buying links to pass PageRank or participating in link schemes.
We encourage you to make changes to comply with our quality guidelines. Once you've made these changes, please submit your site for reconsideration in Google's search results.
If you find unnatural links to your site that you are unable to control or remove, please provide the details in your reconsideration request.
If you have additional questions about how to resolve this issue, please see our Webmaster Help Forum for support.
Sincerely,
Google Search Quality Team" I want to stress that we have never in the past and do not currently buy any backlinks. The problem that we face now is that our site has been online for best part of a decade, there are thousands of people linking to us and I have absolutely no idea where to start. We don’t use an SEO Company but in the past few months have been using SEOmoz to improve our on-page optimisation. I know it’s a massive ask but if could a member of the SEOmoz community or a staff member quickly take a gander and let us know if anything in particular sticks out like a sore thumb it would mean a great deal to me. Of course, if needed we’ll employ the services of an SEO company but I’m hoping one of you guys will see something immediately obvious that could really help us out! Thanks in advance. Kind regards Chris0 -
Google Query Contamination.... Are you seeing this??
I have been searching on Google.com with FireFox this morning. I searched for a state name.... like "georgia". Then I search for a product... like "guitars". For the Guitars query the first page of the SERPs include some music stores in georgia. So, Google is contaminating your search results with information from your most recent query. Are you seeing this too? Has Google been doing this for a long time? Or, I am going crazy?
Search Behavior | | EGOL3
