Ask HN: How can I trust Google Analytics? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: How can I trust Google Analytics?

#31

Post by mgamache » Thu, Jul 09, 2015, 3:26 PM UTC

el33th4xx0r wrote: post #28

fasouto wrote: post #5

Nice experiment! Link for the lazy: https://github.com/goferito/gapoc I guess SEO people already know this, the question is: can you trust a SEO consultant?

Nope. Can't trust SEO consultant, its also hard to trust company/product that uses SEO consultant's services. If somebody have good/reliable products or services, they don't need any phony SEO tricks.

Is the best content is always #1 in Google? I wish that was the case, but it's not. Until Google can evaluate content without external 'signals' SEO will be a fact of life.

Re: Ask HN: How can I trust Google Analytics?

#32

Post by lettergram » Thu, Jul 09, 2015, 3:28 PM UTC

gk1 wrote: post #25

I do marketing ops consulting and see this stuff all the time. First, let's get two things out of the way: 1. Yes, Google Analytics can be quite useless if you keep default settings with no configuration. 2. That doesn't mean you should jump straight to a self-hosted solution, or a paid solution, or throw up your hands and say "it'll never be accurate." For most use cases, GA is more than good enough to measure effec…

I would also add that once you set up google analytics correctly, it should be a good measure of month-to-month or day-to-day improvement(s) (within some error bound).

Re: Ask HN: How can I trust Google Analytics?

#33

Post by gk1 » Thu, Jul 09, 2015, 3:29 PM UTC

fasouto wrote: post #5

Nice experiment! Link for the lazy: https://github.com/goferito/gapoc I guess SEO people already know this, the question is: can you trust a SEO consultant?

As a marketing consultant: No, usually you cannot. There are great ones out there, but for most people it's too difficult to screen out the quacks. Go by referrals.

Re: Ask HN: How can I trust Google Analytics?

#34

Post by johnward » Thu, Jul 09, 2015, 3:35 PM UTC

sjs382 wrote: post #10

You can't know. GA spam is rampant, more so via referer spam than anything else.

Referrer spam is the worst. This was on a reddit thread today: https://i.imgur.com/mRGiiBQ.png

note the: how to stop referral spam url

Re: Ask HN: How can I trust Google Analytics?

#35

Post by knodi123 » Thu, Jul 09, 2015, 3:38 PM UTC

fasouto wrote: post #5

Nice experiment! Link for the lazy: https://github.com/goferito/gapoc I guess SEO people already know this, the question is: can you trust a SEO consultant?

Hire them on contingency, and then verify their results.

Use something like http://zoomrank.com/ to monitor the position of your site in the various search engines over time; establish a baseline, hire the SEO consultant, and look at your placement graphs. Did you fail to improve, or even go down? Then don't pay the snake oil salesman.

Re: Ask HN: How can I trust Google Analytics?

#36

Post by an4rchy » Thu, Jul 09, 2015, 3:55 PM UTC

In addition to the other comments, you could always try to use another analytics product in parallel (from time to time randomly in the year) to quickly validate the accuracy of the results. This will serve as an indicator and also validate assumptions regarding the integrity of the analytics.

Re: Ask HN: How can I trust Google Analytics?

#37

Post by jand » Thu, Jul 09, 2015, 3:55 PM UTC

There is a workaround - but it will reduce the amount of data points available to GA and put stress on your box: Use server-side tracking calls.

As said, this will remove all data points which are usually gathered by the GA-Javascript. Same thing is possible with Piwik.

You _could try_ to have custom JS that would gather those data-points like e.g. screen resolution.

Re: Ask HN: How can I trust Google Analytics?

#38

Post by simonw » Thu, Jul 09, 2015, 3:55 PM UTC

kelseydh wrote: post #8

We just ran into a problem with Google Analytics trying to track opening clicks by sending an event to GA. Turns out when you click a link to open it, the browser page would load before the event to GA could be sent. Screwed up a huge amount of our click tracking data on GA.

This isn't a problem with GA, it's a general problem with trying to track outbound link clicks - when your browser navigates away it kills execution of scripts, often preventing an event from being fired back to the server.

There are solutions, but they're all pretty unpleasant. The most common is to use an onclick handler on your outbound link that only navigates after the tracking event has been fired. Google Analytics cover this in their own documentation here: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1136920?hl=en

Re: Ask HN: How can I trust Google Analytics?

#39

Post by goferito » Thu, Jul 09, 2015, 3:56 PM UTC

gk1 wrote: post #25

I do marketing ops consulting and see this stuff all the time. First, let's get two things out of the way: 1. Yes, Google Analytics can be quite useless if you keep default settings with no configuration. 2. That doesn't mean you should jump straight to a self-hosted solution, or a paid solution, or throw up your hands and say "it'll never be accurate." For most use cases, GA is more than good enough to measure effec…

Hostname can also be easily faked

Re: Ask HN: How can I trust Google Analytics?

#40

Post by calinet6 » Thu, Jul 09, 2015, 3:57 PM UTC

desdiv wrote: post #13

fasouto wrote: post #5

Nice experiment! Link for the lazy: https://github.com/goferito/gapoc I guess SEO people already know this, the question is: can you trust a SEO consultant?

Only if he's the top search result for "SEO consultant".

Unsurprisingly, such a person exists; though it probably differs by region and various other factors.