Attention Developers: Google Analytics API Launched • Hacker News Board

Re: Attention Developers: Google Analytics API Launched

#11

Post by BobbyH » Tue, Apr 21, 2009, 11:05 PM UTC

What I'd really like is an Excel plugin/toolbar that uses this API to let me create a dashboard for my sites inside an Excel spreadsheet.

Downloading 20 CSVs once a week (and pasting them into my spreadsheet) is labor-intensive and lame.

Re: Attention Developers: Google Analytics API Launched

#12

Post by christofd » Tue, Apr 21, 2009, 11:22 PM UTC

The mentioned Desktop Analytics application is a fascinating use of Adobe's new AIR cross-plattform app: http://www.desktop-reporting.com/polaris.html

I can imagine so many uses of integrating monitoring data into apps.

Re: Attention Developers: Google Analytics API Launched

#13

Post by greg » Tue, Apr 21, 2009, 11:47 PM UTC

Google analytics is installed on something like 40% of all sizable websites. What somebody should do with the API is link up the traffic flowing between those sites. Then you could tell how much value one site is delivering to another. You could create an affiliate network overnight.

Re: Attention Developers: Google Analytics API Launched

#14

Post by chaosmachine » Tue, Apr 21, 2009, 11:56 PM UTC

Unfortunately, Google Analytics is becoming increasingly less accurate as more and more people begin to use javascript blockers and other privacy tools.

This is especially a problem for sites with a high percentage of Firefox users, a significant portion of which are using the NoScript extension (it has almost 50 million downloads).

Re: Attention Developers: Google Analytics API Launched

#15

Post by rgrieselhuber » Wed, Apr 22, 2009, 12:12 AM UTC

TJensen wrote: post #5

This seems like the real beginning of the end for Omniture. I interviewed with them once and their strategy for defeating Google in analytics was to just move faster. With Google's developer base, that doesn't seem possible.

It depends on the market. What gets frequently overlooked when comparing Omniture SiteCatalyst to GA is the services and the reseller / SI market. There is a lot more support / consulting available for high-end SiteCatalyst installations and the cost of the license fee has very little to do with the overall cost of managing the campaign.

Re: Attention Developers: Google Analytics API Launched

#16

Post by wysiwtf » Wed, Apr 22, 2009, 12:12 AM UTC

chaosmachine wrote: post #14

Unfortunately, Google Analytics is becoming increasingly less accurate as more and more people begin to use javascript blockers and other privacy tools. This is especially a problem for sites with a high percentage of Firefox users, a significant portion of which are using the NoScript extension (it has almost 50 million downloads).

And there are easy ways that Google could track people with javascript turned off. I always thought they would add this as a 'Pro' feature and charge money for that option. So you'd have to pay for the complete stats, most personal sites wouldn't care about non-javascript stats, while most commercial sites would gladly pay the fee.

Re: Attention Developers: Google Analytics API Launched

#17

Post by eli » Wed, Apr 22, 2009, 12:47 AM UTC

chaosmachine wrote: post #14

Unfortunately, Google Analytics is becoming increasingly less accurate as more and more people begin to use javascript blockers and other privacy tools. This is especially a problem for sites with a high percentage of Firefox users, a significant portion of which are using the NoScript extension (it has almost 50 million downloads).

Well, that's true for all modern web analytics packages, no? Crunching Apache logs with AWStats is way more bogus given the ridiculous number of rogue bots on the web these days.

Based on my (very simplistic) tests, very few users of my business-oriented site block ads or javascript, but I'm sute it depends on the site. Most of my users are stuck on IE, after all.

Re: Attention Developers: Google Analytics API Launched

#18

Post by eli » Wed, Apr 22, 2009, 12:49 AM UTC

mr_justin wrote: post #7

TJensen wrote: post #5

This seems like the real beginning of the end for Omniture. I interviewed with them once and their strategy for defeating Google in analytics was to just move faster. With Google's developer base, that doesn't seem possible.

Is Omniture really a direct competitor with Google Analytics? I haven't used it (Omniture) in a long time, but last time I did we used it extensively for A-B testing, click tracking and other user-experience type events that I don't generally use Google Analytics for. I am fully aware that I'm probably using about 10% of Google Analytics potential, so maybe they already do all this kind of stuff. The thing I remember…

Yes it is. Precisely because they offer a report builder (for an addt'l fee) that lets you create custom reports that are simply impossible with Google Analytics. My employer was paying them a huge amount of money just to be able to generate reports that collate data from a few dozen different sites.

A GA API changes all that.

Re: Attention Developers: Google Analytics API Launched

#19

Post by mrtron » Wed, Apr 22, 2009, 1:02 AM UTC

tracy wrote: post #6

The samples don't really seem to be working though. Clicking through auto-inputs an ID, but the next step does not show anything (on the graphs). Does this work for anyone?

Nope

Re: Attention Developers: Google Analytics API Launched

#20

Post by dabbledb » Wed, Apr 22, 2009, 1:04 AM UTC

We've been using this - see http://blog.dabbledb.com/2009/04/introducing-dshbrd.html for an initial post about what we've been up to.

(I normally post as avibryant, but had to create this new account to get around noprocrast. sigh)