Comments on: The Accuracy of Web Analytics

By: Ralph

Ralph — Wed, 07 May 2008 07:38:07 +0000

What would be the best to use for analytics that makes things faster? Google analytics is very slow..

By: Paths Forward (05.06.08) — friday night running

Paths Forward (05.06.08) — friday night running — Wed, 07 May 2008 02:01:45 +0000

[...] The Accuracy of Web Analytics (Marketing Pilgrim) takes a look at research on whether you should implement your JavaScript tag at the top or bottom of your page source, depending on the load time of your page. It’s interesting, and I’m all for greater accuracy in measurement, but I can’t help referring you to Accuracy or Precision, which is jump-started from Jim Novo’s theory that precision (repeatable and reproducible) is more important than accuracy (error-prone and doubtful). I happen to agree. Web analytics data isn’t 100% perfect, but if you can generally expect it to be imperfect in the same ways, so you should be able to derive the actionable insights you need. [...]

By: Jordan McCollum

Jordan McCollum — Tue, 06 May 2008 19:58:45 +0000

@Brian—I’m guessing that should be “intents and.” Thanks for the heads up.

By: Mark Barrera

Mark Barrera — Tue, 06 May 2008 17:23:51 +0000

Whatever happened to log file analysis?

It seems that if you want complete data, just analyze the logs…

By: Brian

Brian — Tue, 06 May 2008 16:13:15 +0000

Intensive purposes?

By: Prosperity Writer

Prosperity Writer — Tue, 06 May 2008 15:52:13 +0000

i tested my page load time with a friend from the US. it was a bit slow so i will move my analytics code

By: Anne H

Anne H — Tue, 06 May 2008 14:13:06 +0000

Nice reference. If people are looking for more ways to speed up their site, I would highly recommend the YSlow plugin for Firebug.

The tool will give you an overall score and subtotal for different areas. One suggestion does concern javascript placement. It gives some great advice on speed rules and links to some work done by Yahoo!s performance team.

The tool only works with Firefox. If you use IE, you can download AOL’s pagetest.

I’ll warn you that if you don’t use a content delivery network (CDN), your score will be lower. I wish it had an option to turn that rule off. Otherwise, I think the tool is great.

By: Seologia

Seologia — Tue, 06 May 2008 11:34:10 +0000

What about placing the code in the middle or bottomish-middle? Seologia's last blog post..El algoritmo de Google no es perfecto

By: Search Engine Optimization Journal

Search Engine Optimization Journal — Tue, 06 May 2008 11:28:49 +0000

Great Post! There are many great analytic programs out there but they often show vastly different data due to different technologies. Search Engine Optimization Journal's last blog post..How Social Media Can Help Boost Your Search Engine Optimization Strategies

By: Links do Dia: 06.05.08 « Dissonância Cognitiva

Links do Dia: 06.05.08 « Dissonância Cognitiva — Tue, 06 May 2008 09:54:30 +0000

[...] The Accuracy of Web Analytics – Roderick Ioerger in Andy Beal’s Marketing Pilgrim When it comes to marketing everyone is out to compose the most compelling message possible and then measure an audience’s reaction to that message. The question then becomes are measuring the tools that web marketers use reliable? I think the general consensus is that many of the tools that rely on Java Script are less reliable than marketers would like them to be. [...]

By: seo dude

seo dude — Tue, 06 May 2008 09:46:42 +0000

And then there is always browser compatibility problems. If the browser does not support java or has it disabled then that person will never get picked up by analytics. This is why you often get different results with analytics compared to your server based stats. seo dude's last blog post..A few quick updates

By: Ralph

Ralph — Tue, 06 May 2008 09:40:25 +0000

We also put the analytics code completely down of the page, great tips for analytics.

By: Jayson

Jayson — Tue, 06 May 2008 07:27:13 +0000

Thanks for the information – we’ve never fully trusted our analytics; we usually just accept that they’re wrong but hope that they are consistently wrong in the same areas.

We track traffic etc.. using 3 different programs and they’re all significantly different.

Yeah, I’m going to check on our load times and code location and see if we can improve in some areas.

By: SEO Forums

SEO Forums — Tue, 06 May 2008 06:13:09 +0000

That’t indeed cool tips for inserting analytics codes…..really I thankful to you…

By: Neeraj Srivastava

Neeraj Srivastava — Tue, 06 May 2008 06:10:29 +0000

Really load time is so important for a website and we always try to keep it less and not more than 3-4 seconds but earlier I was not aware about that we should insert analytics javascript according to load time....Really great tips and helpful too....thanks for sharing Neeraj Srivastava's last blog post..Useful Tips to Counter Web Spam-Matt Cutts