Tampilkan postingan dengan label analytics. Tampilkan semua postingan
Tampilkan postingan dengan label analytics. Tampilkan semua postingan
Kamis, 19 Januari 2012
Google, Paranoia or a Cause for Concern?
Copyright 2006 Sharon Housley
Anti-Google sentiment is on the rise. Web pundits have tossed around monopoly theories and privacy advocates have warned of a day of reckoning. While Google has made friends on Wallstreet, it has disappointed the technical evangelists who were once its fiercest followers. Google has grown into a big scary company and web watchers are expressing their concerns about the information Google gleans from their various services.
Google Analytics is free, no one can beat the price, but what is the real cost? The cost is your data. While not terribly important when analyzed alone, when aggregated with other information Google has access to, it could be damaging. Data mining has made the collection of data meaningful. It has become easier to find patterns and trends in large volumes of data.
While any of that information independent of other data, might be non-threatening or irrelevant to someone doing analysis, when combined with other data Google has access to, it can paint a very clear picture of how, not only individual companies are performing, but the aggregate data could possibly paint a picture of how entire business sectors or industries are performing.
The big question is how will Google use this information? Will it affect search engine ranking? Will it influence keyword costs?
Paranoia? Lauren Weinstein doesn't seem to think so, her blog post entitled "The Dark Side of Google" http://lauren.vortex.com/archive/000108.html , paints a very clear picture of the danger of a single entity possessing all of the data.
According to a recent USA Today article "In just seven years, Google has emerged as one off the most influential companies of the 21st century, a multinational whose recent forays into classified ads, book publishing, video, Wi-Fi and telecom make its data empire ever more powerful." The article goes on further to quote Jeff Chester, head of the digital Center for Digital Democracy saying "Google could easily become the poster child for a national public movement to regulate data collection".
Lets take a look at Google's new analytics tool. As a reporting tool, Google Analytics offers good features and functionality. Google Analytics tells publishers who their website referrers are, what pages visitors are viewing, the length of the visitor stay, what items are purchased. Google Analytics data can be used to develop new technologies, and optimize pay per term influence ranking.
Google wants to make money, and like it or not, data is a commodity. Google will likely use the data from their various ventures to develop new technologies and personalize content. Conspiracy theorists believe that the Google's aggregate data will also be used to optimize the fees charged for pay-per-click, influence organic ranking or worse yet sold.
Unbeknownst to many users, privacy advocates say that Google's technology give Google the ability to collect enormous amounts of data about interests and online habits of web surfers. That said, Google's growth will continue to motivate privacy advocates and those in the technology field behind the Attention Truste movement to work together, to improve how personal information and subscription information is used online. I expect we will see a lot of energy and effort in this arena.
Lets face it, Google wants to make money; no, now that they are public they *need* to make money and like it or not, data is a commodity. Whether Google will use your data or not is still to be determined, but the fact remains they can if they choose to. Google's storage capacity, is as deep as its pockets, meaning that it is far ahead of competitors. All of this has motivated privacy advocates and eyes are on and will continue to be focused on Google and the type of data they are capable of collecting.
Sabtu, 03 April 2010
Analyze This: Web Analytics
So, you think you’re off to a good start because you finally got your new Web site up and running. You even have one of those counters at the bottom of your homepage so you know exactly how many people visit your site. Done patting yourself on the back yet? When you are, it’s time to move your site to the next level. It’s time for Web Analytics.
Web Analytics may sound like some sort of complex configuration for your web site, but for amateur Web page developer and internet retailers, Web Analytics is actually an incredibly useful, and easy, tool. In one fell swoop, Web analytics can help you figure out all the important information about people who visit your site. Put simply, it’s a way to study who visits your site, what they do while they are there, and why they leave. We’re talking about, all the Whos, Whats, Wheres, Whens, and Whys.
If you’re looking to sell something on your site, Web analytics can tell you what product pages are attracting the most viewers, which ones the least. The tool can even tell you what parts of your site are confusing to your visitors. And it can tell you where your biggest customers are coming from.
If you’re looking to market yourself on search engines, there’s no better way than Web Analytics. The tool allows you to figure out which keywords work best to drive traffic to your site. It can help you figure out how many hits you’re receiving from your advertising campaigns. That way, you can build your Web content to focus on those keywords and campaigns, and to drive even more traffic to your site.
The benefits of Web analytics are many, so here is just a short list of the main ones.
Web Analytics can:
• provide a traffic count. But unlike those basic counters on the bottom of a homepage, Web Analytics can breakdown your visitors by how many are new, or “unique,” visitors, and how many are repeat visitors, along with what pages, and how many pages, they viewed.
• track down the IP address of your visitors, which is like their numerical address on the Web where the visitors are coming from. Not only that, you can track them down to their geographical, real-world location, too, as well as the time of day that they came.
• breakdown individual visits by the entry page, where the person first landed at your site, and the exit page, the last page they visited before they left. Entry pages generally show that the visitor may have bookmarked your site on that page, probably because of its valuable content. Exit pages, on the other hand, could be your site’s most boring content.
• count the total time that visitors spent on your site, and exactly what path they took through the site. This can give you the better idea about how well-designed your Web page is, so you can learn how to better design your site’s navigation to direct visitors where you want them to go, and get them to stick around your site longer.
• trace your visitors back to the links that brought them to your site. The more links other Web sites have to your pages, the better. On the other hand, visitors may have come straight to your site, which is also not too shabby. It could mean that word-of-mouth on your site is working.
• weigh the value of search engine keywords in your Web content. You could find out what search terms visitors are using at your site. And you could also analyze which terms people are using at search engines to find your site. Either way, it’s a great way to optimize your content to what your visitors are looking for.
The ultimate benefit of Web Analytics is to make your site more worthwhile to its visitors. But of course, you want to make it more worthwhile to you too.
Web Analytics may sound like some sort of complex configuration for your web site, but for amateur Web page developer and internet retailers, Web Analytics is actually an incredibly useful, and easy, tool. In one fell swoop, Web analytics can help you figure out all the important information about people who visit your site. Put simply, it’s a way to study who visits your site, what they do while they are there, and why they leave. We’re talking about, all the Whos, Whats, Wheres, Whens, and Whys.
If you’re looking to sell something on your site, Web analytics can tell you what product pages are attracting the most viewers, which ones the least. The tool can even tell you what parts of your site are confusing to your visitors. And it can tell you where your biggest customers are coming from.
If you’re looking to market yourself on search engines, there’s no better way than Web Analytics. The tool allows you to figure out which keywords work best to drive traffic to your site. It can help you figure out how many hits you’re receiving from your advertising campaigns. That way, you can build your Web content to focus on those keywords and campaigns, and to drive even more traffic to your site.
The benefits of Web analytics are many, so here is just a short list of the main ones.
Web Analytics can:
• provide a traffic count. But unlike those basic counters on the bottom of a homepage, Web Analytics can breakdown your visitors by how many are new, or “unique,” visitors, and how many are repeat visitors, along with what pages, and how many pages, they viewed.
• track down the IP address of your visitors, which is like their numerical address on the Web where the visitors are coming from. Not only that, you can track them down to their geographical, real-world location, too, as well as the time of day that they came.
• breakdown individual visits by the entry page, where the person first landed at your site, and the exit page, the last page they visited before they left. Entry pages generally show that the visitor may have bookmarked your site on that page, probably because of its valuable content. Exit pages, on the other hand, could be your site’s most boring content.
• count the total time that visitors spent on your site, and exactly what path they took through the site. This can give you the better idea about how well-designed your Web page is, so you can learn how to better design your site’s navigation to direct visitors where you want them to go, and get them to stick around your site longer.
• trace your visitors back to the links that brought them to your site. The more links other Web sites have to your pages, the better. On the other hand, visitors may have come straight to your site, which is also not too shabby. It could mean that word-of-mouth on your site is working.
• weigh the value of search engine keywords in your Web content. You could find out what search terms visitors are using at your site. And you could also analyze which terms people are using at search engines to find your site. Either way, it’s a great way to optimize your content to what your visitors are looking for.
The ultimate benefit of Web Analytics is to make your site more worthwhile to its visitors. But of course, you want to make it more worthwhile to you too.
Langganan:
Postingan (Atom)