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What to do when your site is "too large" for Google Analytics?

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Re: What to do when your site is "too large" for Google Analytics?

#11

Post by landyman »

papa wrote: post #8

I've run into problems with hitting a number of limits on Analytics as well and still have no good solution. A couple of solutions I'm aware of: 1) Omniture Site Catalyst: A lot of big sites use this but it will cost you dearly. My site runs about 85mm pvs/month and they quoted me close to a million dollars a year at those traffic levels! I didn't even bother negotiating it down, even the negotiated price would still…

Other services I've seen that seem to not fall into that "smaller players" category: Coremetrics, Webtrends, Unica, OneStat, and Clicky. I've worked with all of these (and some smaller players too), and I must say that for the value, you really can't beat Google Analytics. Even Omniture will have some times when the data is not available right away; especially as you start doing some more complex things with it.

Re: What to do when your site is "too large" for Google Analytics?

#12

Post by rodh257 »

naturalized wrote: post #9

We do not want Google to know the true size of our service, so we have analytics code in every 5th pageview (when templates are constructed by scripts, it inserts the analytics code only when the UNIX time is divisible by 5.

though that would skew the referrals and other metrics wouldn't it?

Re: What to do when your site is "too large" for Google Analytics?

#13

Post by nostromo »

Buy Urchin and run it yourself -- it's virtually identical to Google Analytics (or at least used to be) because it's the company that Google acquired to make GA.

Avoid Omniture SC. It has a terrible interface, is too expensive, harder than GA to implement, and Omniture doesn't seem to be improving it much, if at all anymore.

Re: What to do when your site is "too large" for Google Analytics?

#14

Post by brown9-2 »

naturalized wrote: post #9

We do not want Google to know the true size of our service, so we have analytics code in every 5th pageview (when templates are constructed by scripts, it inserts the analytics code only when the UNIX time is divisible by 5.

Well, now they know.

Re: What to do when your site is "too large" for Google Analytics?

#16

Post by tcarnell »

naturalized wrote: post #9

We do not want Google to know the true size of our service, so we have analytics code in every 5th pageview (when templates are constructed by scripts, it inserts the analytics code only when the UNIX time is divisible by 5.

I thought every number is divisible by 5

Re: What to do when your site is "too large" for Google Analytics?

#17

Post by drosenthal »

I designed and built high-end web analytics software for years.

Sampling your data by visitor/cookie (not by page view) is the number one thing to do that that no one does. Just sample your data down by a factor of 10 or 100. The costs drop by a factor of 10 or 100, query speeds improve, and the business value of the data drops by very, very little.

The only unfortunate prerequisite for this approach is that you need a company/boss that understands that sampled numbers are OK even if they are not exact. (So, explain, if you must, that your industry insider source tells you that the notion of 'exact' in web analytics world is very loose indeed.)

Re: What to do when your site is "too large" for Google Analytics?

#18

Post by nl »

naturalized wrote: post #9

We do not want Google to know the true size of our service, so we have analytics code in every 5th pageview (when templates are constructed by scripts, it inserts the analytics code only when the UNIX time is divisible by 5.

Umm - I assume you know this, but inserting the analytics code only when the UNIX time is divisible by 5 isn't the same as every 5th pageview.

(Also, doing it on a pageview basis instead of visitor basis means you lose all the nice visit path tracking Analytics does)

Re: What to do when your site is "too large" for Google Analytics?

#19

Post by oasisbob »

rodh257 wrote: post #12
naturalized wrote: post #9

We do not want Google to know the true size of our service, so we have analytics code in every 5th pageview (when templates are constructed by scripts, it inserts the analytics code only when the UNIX time is divisible by 5.

though that would skew the referrals and other metrics wouldn't it?

If your numbers are large enough, no. As long as the selection isn't biased, it doesn't matter.

Another commenter on this topic has a good post about convincing management of the validity of sampled metrics, I'd read it then tip your chair back and stare at the ceiling for a while.

Re: What to do when your site is "too large" for Google Analytics?

#20

Post by bl4k »

tcarnell wrote: post #15

Show off on Hacker News? On that theme does anybody know what the maximum limit of money is before your bank account crashes? (or you have to start buying hotels instead of houses)? :-)

I once tried to deposit enough money in my bank account to cause a buffer overflow. I could never get the shell code to exec though.
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