In 2005 Google released a new service
with the name Google Analytics. Google Analytics is basically
a rebranded version of Urchin, a web analytics service that
Google purchased in begin of 2005.
Like other web analytics services Opentracker.net,
Shinystat.com, Truehits.net Google Analytics is a service
that tells you where visitors to your site are coming from,
what links on the site are getting the most traffic, what
pages visitors are viewing, how long people stay on the site,
which products on merchant sites are being sold and where
people give up in multistep checkout processes. The difference
between these tools or web site analyzers is that Google tracking
is not done in real-time, they use a system what's similar
to log analyzers. That mean it will not measure human behavior
or what's done by the visitor.
Another difference between Google Analytics
and other web tracking services is that Google Analytics is
free and unreliable. Google Analytics doesn't work with Safari
and Mac OS X. In order to view a Google Analytics report on
Mac OS X, you have to be using a Mozilla based browser, IE.
or Firefox. But for sharing your data with the company, Google
doesn't require you to pay directly for their analytics service.
But unfortunately if you want to open an account with
Google Analytics Tracking you will get this answer:
New account signups are temporarily suspended. If you
want to be notified when signups re-open, please enter your
e-mail address on our signup page.
Thank you!
Google already knows a lot of things
about you. If you also use their new tracking service or log
analyzer system, you will tell Google how much you earn, when
you earn it, which products you sell, how often you sell them,
how much you spend for ads on other sites and you will reveal
much more information about your online business and company
details.
Ask yourself if you want Google to know that much about you and your company. Do you really want to share your revenue information with a company that also wants your advertising dollars? Do you want to share your revenue information with any other company at all?
Google officials have declined that they will use the data
to better understand how much you are willing to pay for ads,
based on conversions. They also claim that they do not plan
to tap into the data as a means of improving regular search
results or to identify bad sites. Nevertheless, these things
are easily possible if you use Google Analytics also your
ranking would be in danger. Google engineer Matt Cutts even
writes in his blog: "Blackhat SEOs may be leery of using Google
for analytics, but regular site owners should be reassured."
That sounds as if Google might actually use the information
for other purposes.
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