Tracking is deadly. It skews our perception of reality, gives us a dangerously false sense of security, and pushes us into making poor decisions. In our own company, we track the work that we do to near-psychotic levels of accuracy. Note that isn’t a boast thinly veiled to look like criticism (I’m thinking of “my greatest weakness is my attention … Read More
What can you do when Google are wrong?
We just discovered a bug in Google Analytics. In itself that’s worrying enough, but Google appear quite adamant that this isn’t an issue. I strongly disagree. Here’s what happened. While recently reviewing organic search traffic in Google Analytics, we noticed that some of what Google was identifying as organic was actually coming from AdWords. When we looked further, Analytics identified … Read More
Why are you still using that old thing?
You’re almost certainly running Google Analytics on your website. But have you ever stopped to question why? Most likely it’s down to one of the following: Because it’s free. If so then you might want to question the wisdom of choosing a solution that monitors your website, analyses your online efforts and essentially directs and evaluates all of your digital … Read More
How To Win Customers and Influence Visitors
Every page on your website has the potential to impress or repulse, so why has it become acceptable to only optimise the home page, main page and landing pages? Broadly speaking, every page performs one or more of the following functions: – To inform. – To impress. – To persuade. – To compel. Pages that inform. Passively sharing information is … Read More
Mobile is here and you’re not ready
It’s easy to forget that the PC in your pocket is a mobile phone. It’s easy to forget that it’s even a phone. I rarely use the torch/flashlight app, but it still gets used more than the phone functionality of my device. The figures for mobile web usage are incredible: 56% of American adults are now smartphone owners. Amazon, Wikipedia, and … Read More
How Google Analytics can hurt you
The sampling in your Google Analytics account can be horribly inaccurate, and may dramatically skew the data that you rely on. Does that get your attention? What is data sampling? As defined by Google: “Sampling in Google Analytics (GA) or in any web-analytics software refers to the practise of selecting a subset of data from your website traffic and reporting … Read More
Decrapifying SEO trends in Google Analytics
When it comes to understanding how your website is performing from an SEO perspective, Google Analytics is an excellent quick and dirty tool. It’s also all too often used incorrectly. Important SEO analytics tip #1: Trends are more important than volumes. And they’re easier to spot. Important SEO analytics tip #2: Short term fluctuations don’t matter. I can’t tell … Read More
Misinterpreting Meaningless Metrics Makes Mighty Mistakes
Google Analytics makes it easy to make bad decisions. Really bad decisions. There’s nothing wrong with Analytics as such, aside from some poor design decisions. But it’s a power tool. But unlike many power tools, it doesn’t come with a bright warning sticker, and there are no gleaming blades and loud noises to tap into our common sense and scare … Read More
The dark is getting darker
You probably already know that Google aren’t reporting all your organic keywords, but the problem may be more serious than you realise. The background in brief: In October 2011 Google announced that they would no longer be reporting on the organic keywords used by anyone logged into Google. In other words if someone is logged into Gmail (for example) and … Read More
How to measure the trend in “not provided” data
I’ve spoken to a number of people who found the There’s a war on data post a little worrying, and in particular wanted to know how to how many of their organic visits are being recorded as “not provided”, and how to see the rate of increase in this trend. It’s very simple. Go into your Analytics account, then choose Traffic … Read More