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Google analytics gives you the power you want (without the education you need)
October 29, 2019

Google analytics gives you the power you want (without the education you need)

Kenny Madison | TrustRadius Reviewer
Score 10 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User

Software Version

Google Analytics

Overall Satisfaction with Google Analytics

Google Analytics was used to give our clients the data they needed on the effectiveness of their websites. It would give us the data we needed to tweak campaigns and allow A/B split testing. We used it not just with our SEO efforts, but with PPC and a bit of basic design work as well.
  • Granular data. Analytics can pinpoint at what time, where, and who exactly was looking at your website.
  • Options. Analytics can help you create any time of data report you want.
  • Deployment. The code is easy to implement on the backend of any WordPress website.
  • It's not user-friendly. Any beginning user will be daunted by the lines, graphs, and amount of numbers it provides.
  • You can make the data spit out any result you want. For hucksters, this is great. The baseline for success can constantly be adjusted because there are so many options.
  • Opaque reporting. While you can get very granular reporting, keyword data is almost completely dried up.
  • Negative - There are so many numbers. While this is great for analysts, if a client gets a hold of it, it's a death knell. They will be looking at all numbers, expecting all of them to go up, and the analysts won't be able to persuade them not to.
  • This seems like an outrageously basic outlook, but I've been in meetings with clients who are fixating on decreases in percentages a certain group such as direct traffic but not noticing a giant increase in another group like organic. And that's because they demanded to look at the dashboard or else they'd remove their business.
  • Positive - The granularity helps us know when things are succeeding and failing. And annotating is limitless - we can track when successes and failures happen by tagging on the timeline for analytics.
  • Positive - It's a free Analytics tool that is as powerful as you want it to be. But you have to learn it on your own.
SEMRush blew Analytics out of the water when it came to Keyword Research. I had to use Analytics to provide numbers on traffic and successes on conversions. The strategy was made through SEMRush. Analytics keywords would consistently return with (not set) or something of that ilk. SEMRush could provide keywords on topics related to our vertical.
Google provides this super product, but the best teaching for it comes from outside Google. That's absurd. I always felt insecure using the product. Our managers didn't rely on this product very much either, as the data would not necessarily reflect the success of the campaigns. It's so hard to use, despite it being a requirement for the SEO industry.

Do you think Google Analytics delivers good value for the price?

Yes

Are you happy with Google Analytics's feature set?

Yes

Did Google Analytics live up to sales and marketing promises?

Yes

Did implementation of Google Analytics go as expected?

Yes

Would you buy Google Analytics again?

Yes

It's the industry standard. I used other tools to help provide keyword data, but if you need to know traffic coming into your site on a budget, Analytics is your answer. This is a killer app for start-ups, but don't expect anyone to hold your hand to teach you how to use it.