As you know, Google presents it's users with a wide scale of useful tools and services. One of the services if Google analytics which present website owners with a lot of information about visitors of a particular website. All over the Internet I read that the ranking for your target keywords improve dramatically once you remove Google analytics from your website. (Cases are known that websites went up from position 60 to position 6 with in the minimum of time). I am getting more and more the idea that Google is (mis)using their generosity of free services to increase their advertisement revenue. I.e. if you put Google analytics on your website Google knows everything from your site (if they don’t know yet) as well as all the visitors’ information (which keyword is used to get to your website). If you put all this information into the big Google machine you could come to the conclusion that the keyword you want rank for is not doing well in Google their search engine. Because of this bad ranking you start to use Google their Adwords service (can be linked to Google analytics). So with this information they know that you are advertising for a keyword that brings you a lot of visitors, hence Google will increase the amount you need to pay for a click in Adwords. The question I have to you what are your thoughts about removing or leaving Google analytics from your website? If you removed Google analytics or are thinking of removing it what is the reason for this? In case you leave it on your website, why is that? Did you ever tried any other analytics services on the Internet (free or paid)? I am looking forward to hearing from you. Best regards, Marc Witteveen
I have never heard of someone's rankings going up because they removed Google Analytics. The only case that I could see this happening is if they are on a poor server where pages are close to timing out already. The extra connection to the google analytics server might be enough to make those pages time out. I use Google Analytics and I am quite satisfied with what it provides. Google is a multi-billion dollar company that doesn't need to pull shady moves to get people to use adwords.
I use GA and Woopra to view live action. I don't think Analytics would do any harm at all. Personally, I don't think Google is that evil. But i might just be naive.
I removed it from my sites - but not for that reason. It was (slightly) slowing down load times, but mostly I removed it because it was surplus to requirements. Before I used GA I was used to using statcounter as my main source if info, backed up with occasional use of hittail and crazyegg, and I didn't find GA was adding to my knowledge. I prefer statcounter, it's in real time, and I see how individuals move around a site.
I see no bad things from Google Analytics but it cannot provide the most info as it does not have server log access
Personally I love Statcounter. They have always given the information I needed and in a simple format. I like analytics as well, but I found statcounter was most accurate. Reports are also easy to genereate and the free services are quite robust....
Google analytics been better and keeps improving, but still I employ other statistics counter like statcounter where I could get other important information I need.
HI, why you don't like Google Analytic man it's very easy to handle and also offers each 'n every information for free..sitemeter.com may be an alternate but this also ask for money if you want to see old statistics more than a week or two..
I use analytics, and its supposed to be too good. I also use histats. In the beginning I tried sitemeter but that didn't impress me.
Yes but google analytics provides some information which I rarely use. Like But it is fun to see which browser the visitors are using etc.
This is something that I've never heard of. For me, analytics is good enough which I usually use to find out which landing page visitors arrive from. Nothing to complain as well since it's free.
Hello, Thanks for the replies so far, its interesting to read so many positive feedback about Google their services while no one concerns about his or her privacy. Any way, to complete this post I wish to link to a blog post about alternative analytics tools: http://www.hijabimarketer.com/free-open-source-alternatives-to-google-analytics/ Wildcard
Of the ones in that link only Clicky and Piwik are any good. Clicky ain't free if you want all the features and Piwik requires you to install on your own server resources ..not ideal for large sites who wanna get by on a $100 server.
i agree why will my ranking drop 4 analytics if that is the case... the why they make a product and then ban it themselves... they are not crazy that is 4 sure
By not having google analytics, do you think it would be impossible for google to know your traffic and its sources? I doubt it very much......hence why not use the free service, even if google is using this information for its own benefit. Regards, RightMan
I'll agree, I've heard people say their rankings and traffic went up after removing GA, from a lot of people. I have not experienced this however, I run Analytics on all of my websites, and I recommend it to my customers if they don't have an existing solution. I think it is possible to lose traffic after installing GA. I don't want to sound like a jerk here, but if you think you're losing rankings after installing it, it could very well be true, because of something you're doing. Is your bounce rate really bad? Are customers being driven away from your site? Are you putting GA on a bunch of doorway pages that google didn't previously know about? These are factors that google can use against you, so it's something to think about.
i agree with you, i use GA for all my site and even my new site is getting good number of new visitors.. your question is new to me...
Googe analytics is the best tool to get accurate and simple traffic report. And also there is nor relation on traffic by using GA. Can use any other analytic SW but all those are nothing while compared with GA