Sweet, it pays to be a night owl. I just noticed that Google Analytics is live. This is a result of Urchin joining Google. I tried it out and here’s what I’ve noticed so far:
- It’s free. Technically it’s free for sites with 5 million pageviews/month or less. If you have more than 5M pageviews, you need to sign up for an AdWords account, but it sounds like there’s no minimum spend once you sign up. In other words, it’s free.
- It’s quick to sign up. It took me five minutes to sign up (I already had a Google account for Gmail, so add 1-2 minutes if you don’t have a Google account). That includes filling out 2-3 forms, getting the JavaScript to include on pages, ssh’ing to my webhost, and dropping the JavaScript in my templates.
- If you’re using WordPress with a theme like almost-spring, you would edit your header.php file, e.g. wp-content/themes/almost-spring/header.php and put the JS just above the </head> tag. That’s it. Do a view-source on this page and search for “urchin” to see where to drop the code.
- The help pages are pretty good, and it looks like the system is available in 16 languages. If you use weird tricks like reloading the same url with different params as someone submits information, you can add virtual stages so that you can track the progress of users on that url.
- You can track all sorts of things like Flash events, JavaScript events, and PDF downloads.
- They’ve done a very nice job of emphasizing that conversion data is well-protected. Take this quote from the benefits page, for example:
Google takes the trust people place in us very seriously, and is pledged to safeguard the privacy of your corporate data. We understand that web analytics data is sensitive information, so we accord it the ironclad protection it deserves. Read our industry leading privacy policy.
ZDNet also has a good quote from Paul Muret, one of the Urchin founders who is now a director at Google:
Though in theory people who are using Google Analytics and competitive services to monitor their ad campaigns could be exposing information to Google on how those rival services work, Muret said Google would not get any competitive advantage from that.
“We have very strict controls on the data. It is only used to provide reporting to customers and people using the analytics,” he said.
Blackhat SEOs may be leery of using Google for analytics, but regular site owners should be reassured.
The timing on this is great for me. I often advise site owners to check out their server logs, but I hadn’t done much rooting around on my own logs since I started my blog. In fact, the first webhost I signed up for didn’t include access to server logs! To be fair, I did sign up for the “I am a cheap bastard” plan though. I only got error logs, so I had to estimate visitor levels by looking for misses when browsers tried to load a favicon from my site and failed. My current web host gives me server logs and offers a couple packages for reporting (Analog and something else), but they’re not set up by default and it looked like a hassle, so I never bothered. I guess being lazy paid off this time.
I feel a little guilty using a massively powerful analytics package to track visitors to my halloween costume, but hey: it’s free. Swatting a fly with a Buick may feel like overkill, but if the Buick is free, I’m not complaining. 
The only downside so far is that you have to wait 6-12 hours for the first report to show up. I’ll head to bed and let you know how it looks when I get some reports. Or, you know, try it yourself and see what you think.
Overall, Google Analytics should be a hot topic at the WebmasterWorld conference this week. Some people will care a lot about the AdWords features, but plenty of people will want to use it just for tracking. Now, I wonder who I’d talk to on the Analytics team to get them to offer a web counter service..
{ 201 comments… read them below or add one }
Nice! Thanks for this Service. Installtion is a walk in the Park …
I just signed up for Urchin on demand for 199 a month, so this is a huge boost for me and I must say I am amazed!
Really cool, Google!
Will there be a future integration with adsense? Would be nice to see earnings on a page basis.
Yeah a web counter service is a natural addition.
You know, perhaps they should look at incorporating this into the Google Search Appliance?
Always amazed at the quality on offer at Google Matt. Many thanks, from a grateful public.
This is a huge move. Boy am I glad I’m not in the free web counter / logdata stats business. Some people are going to wake up broke this morning. Google just went Darwin all over them.
From what I’ve read so far it looks like a pretty nice tool.
I’ll just give it a try on one of my adwords accounts.
? this page is not pretty in my firefox:
http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?answer=27263&topic=2974
(for those who don’t understand any german: the linked page contains a new formula which allows the germans to take over the world by creating a ‘ubersearchengine’)
I can’t set it up for http://www.mysite.com/directory/
It gives me invalid input?
I tried http://www.mysite.com/directory/
http://www.mysite.com/directory
http://www.mysite.com/directory/index.htm
‘invalid input’
Matt
This is absolutely crazy stuff. Ya! While people like me are laughing all the way to the bank, hundreds of services will become reduntant overnight.
You were charging $199 per month for this and you make this FREE – overnight. I am wondering what makes you feel comfortable losing this much revenue. Insight into websites’ usage patterns?
I know you will not peek into individual users’ data being the good people you are, but the pattern data will mean a lot, I am sure.
To me this is a silent revolution. What can I say, keep it up!
Hello,
The language French is ok for the subscription but the product is in English. i don’t find the french version if i am logged.
If you find this for me, i will be very happy
Thanks
Guillaume alias Le_Phasme
Ps : Sorry for my english which is not very good lol
Looks good to me, only thing is, I had my current tracker in an include in the footer. I know the instructions say to use it in the tags, but, I did get the message that the code was installed successfully, so will see in 12 hours time if it works!
Can I say goodbye to WebTrends now? eek! :0 I dont think I dare.
Fantasmagoric news indeed! Viva, Google, viva.
Matt: I spoke with you at SES 2000 – still got one of your biz cards. Perhaps I should frame it, or eBay the thing and live off the proceeds?
Just a question: how do you contain spam comments submitted? I’m sure you must moderate but even so, and even with the security code, you must get tons of manually-submitted claptrap. How do you deal with it?
This is great news – I’d always wanted the ability to track user paths and the like instead of just referrers and keywords, and was just about getting round to splashing out on a solution.
It is a little worrying that G will suddenly know an awful lot about us and our users but considering so many people are likely to sign up what are the chances they’ll be looking at my stats?
I am a current user of Urchin now Google Analytics and I just saw that is it FREE. What is the catch? There has to be one…. Or is Google trying to put all the other web analytics business out of business….
hey matt, either the demand to sign up is overloading the servers or something screwy is going on. i keep logging in at the analytics page then getting hung up loading the page.
where’s the adsense integration?
It should be able to tell me how much I’ve earned for this URL, and my page by page click through rates.
Come on, it’s just one more left join
never mind matt. i just got this message on my screen:
Currently Undergoing Maintenance
Google Analytics reporting is currently undergoing maintenance and will be available shortly. Your site traffic is being logged and you will be able to see the data after system maintenance has concluded.
seems strange to have maintenance at launch but oh well, its a free service!
It seems google loves to know more about website traffic by offering this service free. I would think twice before using this service.
Matt, you can also try and acquire mcdar.net so that you can know more about which keywords seo companies traget for a particular site.
With yet another service linked to the Google Account, I am hoping that there is a major overhaul coming SOON for the Google Accounts interface. I am starting to lose track of all the services I can access using my Google/Gmail account – gmail, video, reader, groups, local, personalized home, search history, and now analytics. When I go to google.com/accounts and sign in, I am greeted with a pathetic page with a couple slightly helpful links on the left, but no indication, and more importantly, no diretly linked gateways, to all the services accessible though the account I just supposedly signed into. Not to mention, the Google Account is hardly a single-signon (as you would expect, since all the services fall under the term “Google Account”) since you generally have to re-sign in for every service you go to.
There appears to be little to no coordination among the various Google teams who are tasked with creating Google Account centric services. I hope that someone at Google will soon realize that they are losing out on tons of synergistic opportunities at best, and at worst just a simple way to move from one Google service to the next without manually tying in URLs or scouring the Google Labs page.
I’ve said this before in various places, but the situation is getting worse as more (incredibly helpful) services are introduced, so Matt, please please don’t let this fall on deaf ears.
Wow, very cool, thanks.
I use wordpress with a lil’ plugin called bstat which you can find here: http://www.maisonbisson.com/blog/post/10662/ it’s great for those with little traffic.
-AP
Matt, can you comment on the Terms of Use section that talks about “For Personal Use Only”? Is that referring to the fact you can’t resell the service, or does it mean you can’t put the javascript on any commercial website?
Thanks – and wow, free On Demand
,
Chip-
Yip I definitely agree with Ryan and would love to see some integration with Google Adsense, it seems only natural. That way you have a one stop shop providing you with web tracking information along with Google AdWord promotions and Google AdSense income. All makes for a well rounded package.
How much historical data will be kept as I am sure that users would like to be able to compare trends year on year. Perhaps it might be useful to still keep those Apache log files around!
[To the moderator: Sorry messed up my URL in the first post]
It doesn’t work! When I log on, it just keeps waiting to load. Anyone else have this problem?
David, I reported a help page doing that last night too.
Arun, Google has always been big on measuring return-on-investment. Judging from the press quotes I’ve read, the thinking seems to be that if people can measure conversions well and use AdWords efficiently, they’ll end up being happier (and spending more money to boot). Every survey I’ve read seems to imply that advertisers could do better tracking of conversions, so now people have no reason not to. I think if you set up the tracking right, there’s no reason you couldn’t use it with any ad buys. I’m just a newbie at this though; I haven’t talked to the Urchin folks.
Nicky, I think the JS can be included anywhere on the page. I was being safe and putting it exactly where they recommended, but now that I think about this, you could probably put it anywhere.
Ryan, I’ll pass that feedback on.
Here here on the web counter service
. Even cooler would be offering an RSS feed of your web traffic so that you could check it via your favorite feed reader!
Signed up a few minutes ago and now waiting my 12 long hours for the report. We’ll see how it goes!
-Jonathan
Hi Matt,
Thanks for the post. Its funny you should say that privacy is of great concern however advise that black hats should stay away.
How will you identify black hats without looking at the data on a case per case basis then?
Not a black hat, just a concerned white hat.
Keith Ort, their servers may be really busy from people signing up. I’ll ask, and Chip: I’ll ask about your question too. Since they allow/encourage people to use it on sites where owners are buying AdWords, I don’t think that they mean that commercial sites can’t use this for tracking.
Then Matt said;
>>>Blackhat SEOs may be leery of using Google for analytics, but regular site owners should be reassured.
I don’t think it is ‘just’ so called blackhats that will be leery of this service. Anyone that has followed google for any length of time should be very very leery of this service. The ‘privacy’ notice is a joke. So just what is google going to do with all that info it is going to gather from these small sites?
I would tell anyone that values their privacy and their online business to stay away from this google program.
Looks like google has sucked all the money out of the big sites that it can, so now google is targeting the small online business.
But, I have to tip my hat to you googlites, your bound and determined to controll the net, and with programs like this your well on your way.
Two thumbs Down for this program.
Thank You Google for this new tool.
But it seems to be overcharged today.
This is great. I’m currently using webalizer on most of my sites, but I’m going to try out Analytics in parallel for a while.
The “Down for maintenance” screen seems to be the “Sorry, I’m currently overlaoded” message from the server.
It seems great but why launch it when the servers are not able to take the traffic at the moment? I hope they get it sorted shortly because I can’t wait to use it.
I too recently signed up for Urchin for $199…great now thats its free…hope there are some serious data protection standards enforced…as usual, nice work Google…Soon you will be able to know my sleeping habits.:)…scary thought…
I can’t wait to play around with this new toy, but the Google Statistics is now really sloooow. I guess I am not the only one interested in a free full blown website statistics package that doesn’t require you to put any visble counters on your site!
For those who can read Dutch, I have written a background article about Google Analytics on my blog: http://blog-buzz.blogspot.com/2005/11/wow-google-analytics.html
So is there a minimum traffic cut off you have to meet in order to join? Do they check?
Hey Everyone,
Anyone else see DC 64.233.171.147 showing page rank from a month ago?
My toolbar is displaying this PR as well.
@DLL Guy:
No it’s free for sites with 5 million pageviews/month or LESS. If you have more than 5M pageviews, you need to sign up for an AdWords account.
wow, there appears to be another Ryan here.
Somebody’s defacing my name by saying they can’t get the thing to work. That’s not me
my comments aren’t that on topic.
btw Matt, once you guys integrate adsense, the next feature is to allow me a customizeable report snippet (via RSS) to put on my google.com/ig homepage.
Maybe a nice table like
URL Visitors Organic Paid Conversions AdsenseRevenue
that is clickable to take me to the corresponding report of the tool.
I’m sure I have tons of other ideas, but that would require actually creating an account and installing the tracker but I’ve been doing this on the side for over a year now with my own software anyway..
For now, I’ll start with the stuff that would actually make me use this on a daily basis.
Matt is google going to advise webmasters that put up this javascript code to modify their privacy policies to note that they are now giving personal information about their visitors to google and whoever google decides to give this personal information too?
Quote: Matt is google going to advise webmasters that put up this javascript code to modify their privacy policies to note that they are now giving personal information about their visitors to google and whoever google decides to give this personal information too?
LOL lots0
Hey Matt this is great-
I just got about 75$ a month richer, think I;ll spend it on adWords…
I really commend Google for this, another step toward liberating the world’s information. In retrospect it’s hard to beleive companies were getting away with selling site owner’s stats back to them for $1000 a pop.
There’s some misguided reporting going on out there about this-
http://www.marketingvox.com/archives/2005/11/14/google_offers_free_web_analytics_to_advertisers/
Some people are saying only advertisers can use the program, or alluding to the fact that there is a quid pro quo vis a vis AdWords (wow what a sentence!)
Unfortunately I can’t log in now because they are upgrading accounts.
Joe, I think if every Google service linked to every other service, the pages would get way too cluttered (sort of like Yahoo!). I don’t think it is too hard to remember all their URLs, and there is always this page.
I haven’t been able to look at this, but is it like advanced web stats? If so, this going to rock. I don’t keep logs on my server because they were taking up a lot of space and when my disk would fill up, Apache would stop (I’m working on a new server, but I digress). The only thing I really miss about not keeping logs is not being able to see what people search for to find my website. However, if you provide a good interface to see lots of interesting information, that this will be wonderful. Thanks.
Andrew
PS: It seems soon enough every website hit will also forward a request to Google, either for ads or web stats tracking. Isn’t this why people were all upset over Doubleclick back in the day? Man, Google Watch is going to have a fit.
Being of the somewhat paranoid or should I say careful type I do not just jump into anything. I wrote up a blog of my concerns, if you want to click my URI you can read them.
“Blackhat SEOs may be leery of using Google for analytics, but regular site owners should be reassured”.
Matt~ You seem to imply that if you are not spam you have nothing to fear so go ahead and get assimilated using the growing google toolbox. You are basically saying “Open up your stats to google, you can trust us” – I wish you guys would be a little more honest with webmasters and admit that if you have access to our stats you can rule the web and even keep a close eye on the other two search engines correct? Having access to this data also allows you to fix your broken search because you were getting hammered with spam manipulation correct? Isn’t that what Jagger was all about? Isn’t it all about bar codes, keys and a new relationship with google that helps you and us at the same time? If this is the case where can I sign up for a personal “trust” key?
I understand that you might not have all the info. on this Matt but what do you think of the above ideas? If you posted in my new blog I would be honored.
Thanks,
-Aaron
Ryan… the reason why you’re getting “invalid site” is that Google strangely doesn’t like trailing slashes… either in Google Analytics or Google AdWords (and probably elsewhere throughout the service). I’ve respectfully complained about this minor annoyance to my AdWords rep, noting that trailing slashes are -- if anything -- more ‘correct’ than not
.
Nicky… Indeed, I doubt you’ll be able to say goodbye to WebTrends. When I used Urchin on behalf of a former client a couple of months ago, I found it quite useful and intriguing, but not on the same level of depth as stuff like HitBox, WebTrends, and Omniture. Furthermore, I found it was often difficult to do really simple things (like use page titles vs. URLs for specific reports), and Urchin was always frustratingly slow for me to boot.
Speaking of slow… why doesn’t the almighty Goog plan for enough scalability/bandwidth/whatever for first-day launches? Google Reader got hammered… and Google Analytics is clearly getting hammered (I still have no stats at all after 15+ hours…)
And lastly, Joe… re: account synergy… yes, I’ve routinely tweaked Google about this for ages. One of the coolest things about Google is how they empower zillions of small teams, giving them resources, support, responsibility, etc. And from what I understand, there’s a lot of great cross-pollination goin’ ’round the Plex. But with that said, there’s clearly not enough UI consistency and teamwork happening… even with silly simple stuff like login boxes being on the right for some services, the left for others, and so on. Y!’s clearly got the integration thing down to a much greater extent than G.
But I digress
. Anyway, Matt-and-Google… congrats on the whole Google Analytics thing. I’m confident that this service’ll improve over time, and I’m happy to no longer be payin’ money each month to egotistically follow who is clicking on what on my hobbyist sites 
P.S. -- Matt, I’ll say it again… your security code thingy… $&(!*@#! Thankfully, even though I forgot it was case sensitive and WP ate my entire comment, I remembered to CTRL-C my text beforehand this time just in case!
Nice… I own Urchin 5 (with the support contract), so it’s also good to see Google will still be giving Urchin 6 (product) to us.
One thing I find annoying with Google Analytics is your site MUST be the base of the domain. For example you couldn’t track a personal site (like http://www.mattcutts.com/~matt/ or any subfolder) unless you put the tracking code on the root of the domain.
Matt, I was able to sign up this afternoon. Thanks for taking the time to look into it. Tomorrow morning, we shall have some statistics to look over.
I would agree with Lots0 here, there’s a hell of a lot of information to be obtained by Google here. And a lot more valuble information than they could ever gain crawling from their site.
If anybody has a new site or it’s slightly un-ethical or badly constructed, stay clear of this program.
Just like with Gmail Google never fails to amaze me. Free and quality. kind of scarry though thinking about Google holding a monopoly on so many great services. But then again Yahoo! is always one small step behind copycatting heh
Mike
nice costume, where can i get one?
I had just signed up for Google Analytics before coming here! Nice to hear you discussing it. I am really interested in seeing how it works and how useful it can be for me in analyzing my website. Will be interesting to hear more on this.
I clicked on the view example and it gave me a 404 error, https://www.google.com/analytics/home/help/utmcodeex.gif, just thought you might want to know?
Great, I can’t wait to see my first reports in about 12 hours from now.
Gary, you’ll need to be patient, however. I signed up nearly 24 hours ago, and still… no stats. Bummer. But it’s clear that Google beefed up the GA infrastructure around 4pm PST today (about the same time sporadic 404’s appeared), because at least the interface flies now.
I got this strange error message when I tried to log-in?
“The server is suffering from bad karma; it should be operational again soon so check back in a few hours”
WTF???
Mayday! Mayday! Russian page doesn’t exist, repeat: russian page does not exist! Fall back! Fall back! )))
—
The requested URL /analytics/home/tos/TOS_ru-RU.html was not found on this server.
—
When I go to check Tracking Status, I get:
Tracking Unknown
The Google Analytics tracking code has not been detected on your website’s home page. For Analytics to function, you or your web administrator must add the code to each page of your website.
And I have insterted the required JavaScript in the HEAD section (after the and JUST before the statement)..WTF can’t it find it
Yeah I set the right URL up too
For your business card;
“Company: Google”
“Position: Ostensible”.
BB
hmm. I added the code to most of my pages including the home page. But the “check status” button says it could not detect the code. I assume its some problem with GA. anyone else having this problem?
Is it me or its not working too well at recognising the code ??
I have added it last night to my page, exactly where it said it should ne (after META tags).
The check status tell me that it cannot find the code on my page (http://www.eboutik.net).
Whats going on ?
See my last post Greg
Okay, this is pure speculation, but I suspect that Google has switched off their tracking software. I find it hard to believe that after months of preparation, yesterday their site (front-end) was almost completely inacessible and today it is working fine. How could they ever have upgraded their server infrastructure in such a short period of time?
The fact that there are no stats showing yet (despite of their promise for them to be available in 12 hours) makes me very suspicious. Also, the fact that Adam says he signed up 24 hours ago and still no stats are showing makes you wonder, doesn’t it?
I guess there’s nothing we can do than to wait for the stats to start showing up…
The code causes my https: SSL pages to display a warning “This page contains both secure and nonsecure items. Do you want to display the non secure items?”
Not something I want when I’m asking for personal info.
Can I just put the JS file at http://www.google-analytics.com/urchin.js on my server?
It would be nice if Google at least had an SSL certificate that matched their domain. I would think they could spare the extra couple $$ to buy one. Then I could just use this https://www.google-analytics.com/urchin.js
It doesn’t look like project manager for this project is doing a very good job.
Hallo,
I have also included the code in my page but it does keeping saying me, there were no code in the page.
best greetings, Thomas
Matt,
could you tell the Analytics team that the contact forms don’t work!
How are they expected to get feedback like this ?
I put the code in http://www.joortje.nl/index.html
but in google analytics it keeps saying:
Profile Name: http://www.joortje.nl
Website URL: http://www.joortje.nl/index.html
Tracking Unknown
The Google Analytics tracking code has not been detected on your website’s home page. For Analytics to function, you or your web administrator must add the code to each page of your website.
anyone got a tip? i guess i implenmented the code just right
I had some scary dreams last night, you know the part in Terminator when the T2 comes to get the scientist?
Ok, back to boring reality.
I really like the new analytics. I guess I am like many and worry about privacy intrusion.
I am am trying it on one of my sites today, it appears to still be very “beta”.
Since, Matt is away let me moderate for him mkay?
If you have an issue with Analytics post your feedback here: https://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/request.py
-AP
Matt, could you please tell the analytics team to either get the reports working (over 24 hours and no data), or at least put some kind of notice on the site letting us know what the real status is? The bogus 12 hour notice is getting old.
I already was suspicious, but now my previous posts have been ‘moderated’ (deleted) I am very sure that there are major problems with Google Analytics and that they have switched off the counter mechanism (so you only see the front-end of the site, but nothing is being tracked).
I wonder how long it will take for this comment to be deleted
I give up. I’ve added the code to my site and Analytics just refuses to recognize it. pffffffffffft
Installed the code yesterday morning, it took 18 hours to recognise that I’d put the code on my site and now I’ve been waiting almost a day and still no reports.
Im seriously excited about the prospect of this tool but for something that has no Beta status it sure is a bit creaky. At least I can log in and out quickly now, yesterday even that took an eternity!
Hope you guys sort it out soon!
I love web stats, I will use this…I don’t mind if Google knows where my hits come from, they already know what type of porn I like…Google should place their servers into a “blind trust” and maybe people will start trusting them again
Read about GA today and decided to give it a go, but the two sites I added the code to aren’t being validated by GA. As soon as you ask it to check a page displays saying it couldn’t validate, but it’s a suspiciously quick response. I wonder if it’s a resource issue.
It’s hard;y surprising that there are server issues with something like this. Even a company as big as Google can’t plan for the absolutely massive spike in initial interest that a launch like this brings. Guess we’ll just have to give it a few days to let the dust settle.
Google analytics is live.. Well, its surfacing atleast! Can’t wait to see what theese stats will look like, around 36 hours into the mix now and still no data…
I also had errors when signing up saying it couldnt see the code I had added . weird.
is there support for multiple sites under one account?
Does blocking the cookies this javascript plants on browsers cause any known problems… Or did you guys even check?
I am glad some crash test dummies are trying it first, I couldn’t get the thing to complete the header status check…so it’s time to wait and see.
I remember how urchin created a HUGE data file for one of my sites with hardly any traffic, the guy who hosted my stuff got so frustrated he deleted it and went back using awstats when he couldn’t get help from urchin. Hopefully google has modified it a lot.
Do you guys know how to get it working with htpps?
I wanted to to setup a “Goal” my “order placed” page (e-Commerce site) but could not do it without getting promted by IE. Either it does not like reference to http on https page or if i replace http with https when referencing javascript it complains that certificate was issued to google.com and not google-analytical.com
Thanks
Matt,
I am confused by 2 of your statements.
First, you claim that Google will have a high-integrity policy regarding data and privacy. “We have very strict controls on the data. It is only used to provide reporting to customers and people using the analytics”. Sounds great.
But then:
“Blackhat SEOs may be leery of using Google for analytics, but regular site owners should be reassured.”
Hmm, so Google is going to sniff your SEO hat color just enough so that black hat SEOs should be wary, but Google is only using data to provide reporting to customers?
I’ve been writing in my search blog about Hitbox’s mess and Urchin, if you have any interest in reading about it, send me an email. I am an analytics junky!
I think it could be useful, we have one site with no stats due to the server overhead so this could come in handy. I noticed a post at http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum89/10448-4-15.htm message 53 where the poster claimed the Yahoo traffic had ceased after he put in the java script, I think its a crock but would be interested to hear your opinion Matt.
“Blackhat SEOs may be leery of using Google for analytics, but regular site owners should be reassured.”
Funny, Urchin never bothered my BH / spammer sites … I think this is just casting some FUD to that general direction. Har har. Yes, Google might spot some doorway-traffic, etc. – but can they really differentiate it from authentic traffic? And what difference does it make if they track some of your traffic when they can easily just automate a browser to “act human” from an AOL-IP for sites they have tagged as potential BH? What if I feed it bogus good-looking traffic?
It’s just FUD – but you can count on Google keeping the traffic logged for later analysis
A possible bug;
I put it in on one of my new project sites (note its an asp site) and get the following message from my adwords account;
Tracking Unknown
The Google Analytics tracking code has not been detected on your website’s home page. For Analytics to function, you or your web administrator must add the code to each page of your website.
ok so I view the source on the home page and it looks ok to me;
## some bits cut out ##
_uacct = “#########”;
urchinTracker();
Might be a bug might be because its under load, but I’m used to Google things working and this isn’t for me at the moment.
Google Analytics have over 50000 new user during 8-9h, server must sufer a lot. My sites was recognized after 7h. I wander what it will show me after this first 12h countig.
BTW. Very interesting blog You have, I add it to my favourites.
Best Regards
Marcin
So far analytics has been just a waste of bandwidth. 36 hours and no stats… and no notice on the main page about what is going on?
It looks great. I’m still waiting for data though, I added a bunch of sites (which I’m sure everybody else did do -- causing the delays). But it’s all good, I can wait a while longer for a supposedly neat, and free, web analytics tool.
Damn! Just added the code to my index page. Unfortuanatelly, Google does not want to recognize it
I have added the code to my index page only for now. Do I have to add it too all pages in order for Google to validate it?
Craig, I read it as Matt is speaking on behalf of black-hats as they are always ultra paranoid and sleep wih one-eye open.
Dave,
Ah, I see. That’s one of those statements that can mean two different things. I retract.
I installed the codes for around 7 hours ago and as the rest of you guys I’m very excited to see the first report.
Not really worry much about sharing my sites traffic info with Google. I already do that through AdSense and there is in fact nothing to hide
RE: “I already do that through AdSense and there is in fact nothing to hide”
Yep, me too. I guess Google can see all sites using it as likley being white hat.
The life of a black hat must constant worry
Well, I signed up over 24 hours ago and I still can’t access my reports. I guess I’ll keep my fingers crossed for tomorrow.
I signed up a few minutes after release and still no results,
the system found my code even when it was not placed in the header under the meta tags, after a while I moved them to their proper position since i was not getting any repots. After the modifications, still nothing, and I must admit I’m glad that I’m not the only one whos having these kinds of problems. I was beginning to worry about my site :S
as for the information about trafic and content… there’s a coice to be made, privacy over productivity… I’ve chosen productivity since I’m sold to Gmail, the personalized homepage and search history, I must admit they make my life easier… now only if they could get this one going, my life could get event simpler yet again.
Regads,
Alexandre
Stats are now reporting on Google Analytics. Several forums have reports. I have it working too. Most people have seen a 24-36 hour delay from time of signup. Reports include data all the way back to when signup occured.
I received the first data within 24h. Perfectly well. This tool rocks!
I’m not putting it on every website as I’m a little concerned about privacy issues but it’s great for general analysis.
This is a very powerfull tool. Unfortunately the documentation is poor.
I always prefer the tutorial like approach when getting introduced into a complex piece of software.
Start off with a first steps chapter like ‘hello world’. If that works the user should be pointed to the next steps.
The google documentation has a glossary like approach wich is okay for simple tools or as an addition to a comprehensive tutorial.
Maybe I’m just one lazy a** software engineer in the making
I signed up nearly 30h ago, but am still seeing the standard ‘waiting for data’ message. I’m also seeing a message at the top of the analytics homepage teling me that tracking has not been validated or added to one or more of my website profiles, though checking the status on both sites says that tracking has been installed successfully (!)
Hopefully it’ll sort itself out and start working soon… fingers crossed
thanks google keep up the good work.some of these people should admit just how much they need all the things google has to offer and stop with the complaining..
If you’re still seeing the “Your first reports will be ready within twelve hours.” message, try clicking on the “View Reports” link nonetheless. It should work.
i installed it almost 36 hours ago and there’s still no reports. there _is_ a reports page, but there’s no data on it…
It was a bit of a wait, but it was worth it! This is really one cool tool, I am a bit afraid of becoming a ’stats junkie’.
Oh, by the way, in case you haven’t read this on the GA website:
Update: 5:22 PM PST. Tuesday, November 15th, 2005
Currently, report updating for Google Analytics is experiencing delays. As a result, you may not be seeing any data in your reports even after implementing the Analytics tracking code.
We apologize for any inconvenience. This reporting delay is associated with unexpected demand for Google Analytics. Under normal circumstances, the data in your reports will be at most six hours old.
Great great article
I have find many new tools for seo work here :
http://www.cached.it
Just to confirm from my previous comment – the JS code works fine in an include in the footer of the page, so it doesnt necessarily need to be in tags above the body tag.
Reports look great by the way, and yes, just click on the “View Reports”, my reports are there but still state that the program is still tracking info.
Very good tool. In french !!!!!! Some translations are very strange!!
I have to disagree with Matt on the help section. I started using Urchin after Google purchased it, but before it became free, and most of the help for OnDemand was just ported from the software-based version. I kept getting emails from Support saying “Oh, that’s not actually part of OnDemand.” I hope Google is cleaning that up (or already has, I’ll have to go read over some of those pages now that it’s switched).
I’m also disappointed that some of the functionality has been taken out. Sure it’s great to get “a free buick” but if they’ve taken out the seats and radio, are you really getting a better deal?
Great. I’d like to use it.
Before J3 i got 30,000 unique visitor at day from google and with Adsense revenue i can pay it. Now google send to my best site in the market palce only 100 visitors.
I’ve not understood anymore why google have dropped my rank. http://directory.marangio.it is a good site with unique contents that are copied from many sites, and no spam activity. I’ve reported this situation but the rank is always dropped. Now in first positions therare clones of the sames site?! … and sites that use my contents!!
How Google say that i copy that contents!? That contest are mine!
Do you Look at response headers? And if i modify a single word in any page change the response header! So my page became no more the first!
Sorry.
Best Regards
Luca Marangio
There are loads of small businesses out there who are absolutely reliant on the traffic they get from Google.
In the event of a wrong black listing, that’s someone’s livelihood.
I think Google started out great but are starting to show signs of corporate greed in an already monopolised industry.
They will propably elimate all the competition, and then start charging for the product.
I’ve been signed up for 24 hours and no stats here.
Strangely Statcounter requires the script in the body and Google Analytics requires the script in the head of a post.
Some of my sites have the script in the head, others in the body before I realised my mistake. See what happens. But no stats for any sites. Google Analytics may just not have enough computer power to ana