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Google Analytics Blog: What’s happening on your site right now?

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Re: Google Analytics Blog: What’s happening on your site right now?

#11

Post by cooperadymas »

dangrossman wrote: post #9
andrewtbham wrote: post #2

I wonder if people at startups like ChartBeat, mix panel, clicky feel like the market is validated or feel worried. Or just keep focusing on doing a better job than competitors.

I've been running W3Counter, a competing web stats service, since before Google Analytics. Before Google bought Urchin, that kind of web stats reporting was something businesses paid for. When Google released Analytics for free, I'm sure more than a few businesses were wiped out. Perception of the space changed forever and now I can't count on 1% of my users to pay for web stats, even for things GA doesn't provide. R…

Just do it better than Google does. Or target a specific niche. Not easy, I'm sure. But it can be done.

Visual Website Optimizer, Optimizely, and UnBounce all run paid A/B testing sites in spite of Google's presence in the market.

Re: Google Analytics Blog: What’s happening on your site right now?

#12

Post by dangrossman »

Zakuzaa wrote: post #5
ck2 wrote: post #3

What's interesting is if Google can offer this to webmasters, then somewhere inside Google they can tell about 90% of how many people are online in the internet and where they are. Obviously not an exaggeration, it's just a mapreduce query of all that data from every service they own. I don't have a single google service on my sites but I must be a super-tiny minority.

I don't think more than 10% of all sites have analytics installed. But if you include other services and products like toolbar and adsense, Google can surely see a great deal of what's happening on the Internet.

I can't cite anything as I don't remember where I read it, but there were articles back when Google announced its acquisition of DoubleClick that if you combine Analytics, DoubleClick and AdSense, Google's tracking reaches over 90% of web surfers.

Re: Google Analytics Blog: What’s happening on your site right now?

#13

Post by jcampbell1 »

cooperadymas wrote: post #11
dangrossman wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been running W3Counter, a competing web stats service, since before Google Analytics. Before Google bought Urchin, that kind of web stats reporting was something businesses paid for. When Google released Analytics for free, I'm sure more than a few businesses were wiped out. Perception of the space changed forever and now I can't count on 1% of my users to pay for web stats, even for things GA doesn't provide. R…

Just do it better than Google does. Or target a specific niche. Not easy, I'm sure. But it can be done. Visual Website Optimizer, Optimizely, and UnBounce all run paid A/B testing sites in spite of Google's presence in the market.

The examples provided are not relevant, because chartbeat also saw a hole in Google's offering, and filled it. That is exactly the same as all the sites you mentioned. The only difference is Google is now offering real time analytics.

A counter example would be a service that provided a missing feature for a google product, that was later filled by google, but managed to survive after google launched the feature.

Re: Google Analytics Blog: What’s happening on your site right now?

#14

Post by yahelc »

minouye wrote: post #8

Does this mean that all reporting will be real-time? Not having to deal with the data lag in GA would be fantastic.

No. The real-time reporting is a separate section; this change doesn't mean anything for the data in the regular reporting sections. The data Real Time uses is unfiltered and raw, and only limited dimensions are available: Geographic source, traffic source, pageview name, and maybe one or two more things. I'm sure it'll be built out over time.

Re: Google Analytics Blog: What’s happening on your site right now?

#15

Post by jcampbell1 »

ck2 wrote: post #3

What's interesting is if Google can offer this to webmasters, then somewhere inside Google they can tell about 90% of how many people are online in the internet and where they are. Obviously not an exaggeration, it's just a mapreduce query of all that data from every service they own. I don't have a single google service on my sites but I must be a super-tiny minority.

My guess is the real time processing is only done if the real time view is open.

Re: Google Analytics Blog: What’s happening on your site right now?

#17

Post by yahelc »

andrewtbham wrote: post #2

I wonder if people at startups like ChartBeat, mix panel, clicky feel like the market is validated or feel worried. Or just keep focusing on doing a better job than competitors.

Honestly, I think they're probably feeling validated. GA is a 2000 pound gorilla, but this offering is very light compared to what some of the other dedicated Real Time Analytics providers give. It's possible they'll build it out further, but for now, GA Real Time probably wouldn't satisfy people who are already willing to pay for the high quality dedicated real time tools.
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