Google Analytics
Hmm… not sure how I feel about this. I set up for Google Analytics on my various websites a few weeks ago.
Why? Because I wanted to get the rich usage, uh, “analysis”, I guess. After a couple weeks of data collection, I’m impressed to say they give good charting and incredibly rich usage analysis. Good stuff.
So, why a blog post? Well, two reasons really:
1) Why is Google doing this and MS isn’t?
2) What is the impact of Google having all this data?
Let’s drill down.
The first one is short. I don’t have a good answer. Maybe they’re doing it because they’re ahead of the game. Maybe it’s because they are better in tune to their advertising customer’s needs. Maybe they’re making a huge mistake. I don’t know. What I do know is that like Google Sitemaps, it seems like a nobrainer way to lock-in websites concerned with search-engine optimization and advertising revenue.
The second one is a little bit longer. I was thinking of this the other morning and it got me a little bit concerned, giving Google (or MS) all of this data.
Think about it — by dropping this javascript into each webpage on the site, it is basically phoning home to Google all of the details about who is looking at your site, where they’re from, how long they spend there, what keywords they used to lead to “a sale”.
At best, Google could use this to “know” which parts of your site are interesting to people and which parts are uninteresting… an easy way to provide even more accurate “page rank” analysis. At worst, they could use this added data to jack up adword prices for “successful” keywords (ie – those that lead to a sale on your site). Hmm.
For all I know, there’s some provision in their agreement that says they won’t use this data. In which case, neither of these is a concern. But if it’s not in there… wow, what a goldmine!
