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Google Launches Web Traffic Analysis Service
segphault writes to pass along that Ars Technica has an interesting article about the recently released Google Analytics. Analytics is Google's new traffic analysis service that helps you to know everything from "how your visitors found you [to] how they interact with your site." Analytics is also built to integrate with AdWords if you are already utilizing that service.
Did they do this based on their acquisition of Urchin? Are Urchin staff now working on this instead? Does this mean the death of Urchin software?
When I heard that they had purchased Urchin back in March I was wondering how long it would be before they came out with a service like this. I'm sure this will be a lot better than a lot of those free "stat counter" services out there.
Bradley Holt
This looks like google is relying less and less on their PageRank algorithm and more and more on data that they spy from users.
It seems to me that the page rank is too easilly manipulated so they are resorting to the alexia toolbar method.
Already they are pusing their toolbar hard (even for firefox where is has limited appeal). This says even more to me that they are using the stats from the toolbar and now these stats to monitor user browsing behavior, which it will use to better their search results.
If you have a Google ad on your page you are already giving them all this information.
This is the end of Web Side Story and similar analytics tools as we know it. Obviously webmasters will flock to Google's free (and probably superior) tools. Google simply takes the $400m market and redistributes the money back to publishers. Amazing.
Well, when I do service my car, the garage has a full access to everything in the car. They could put a tracker and I wouldn't notice it in a century.
... well, I think you get the point.
It is a question of trust. If you decide to use their service, you will need them to have access to your pages (through JavaScript). If you don't trust them, just don't subscribe.
My DSL Provider has a lot of information about myself as well, and I trust them with it. If my trust vanished, I'd switch (well, in France you have actually a lot of choice).
My bank
Write boring code, not shiny code!
All this says is they can say you use their service. I don't think you really need to worry since they won't proclaim you as a customer unless you're massive, like Microsoft or Yahoo or something they're not gonna care enough to talk about you.
Gmail will force you to use https but if you want to sign in to Google Analytics, you provide the same credentials with no encryption.
It is a question of trust.
Not only a question of trust. It's also a matter of Google's reputation. Much like in the recent backlash at Sony, people are not going to sit idly when a company does something stupid. Google has much more to lose by pulling a stunt like that than the gain it would provide. Plus, you could always just rip the snippet out of your page if it does something undesirable.
No "sane webmaster should willfully inject foreign JavaScript on his website"? I'm guessing you've never ran ads on your website before. That's the norm. Nearly every ad network has their code in JavaScript. Heck, chances are if someone is using Google Analytics they're ALREADY using Google AdSense on their site- who's to say that Google hasn't done the same with AdSense? People haven't said anything about the evils of AdSense yet really.
My point is that it is about trust, as a previous poster said. A heck of a lot of companies do business in the exact same way. If you don't trust Google with your site, then don't use it (and get a license of Urchin for yourself- that is extremely solid software; I'd say the best in the business).
Good-Tutorials
By your argument, it would seem unwise to install and use Firefox. It's a foreign piece of code (even though you can monitor its source code if you want, but who has the time for that?). It has the power to snoop through personal files on your computer and report the information back to mozilla.org. Since it has a huge user base and now an automatic and seamless update system, some malicious behavior could get installed into the program and we'd all be screwed without even knowing it.
.js file constantly, *people* are reviewing the .js file constantly) and Google would get some seriously bad PR. There's no incentive for them to risk their image like that.
But the thing is, that doesn't happen. If Google attempted this, the behavior would quickly be discovered (because, although *you* aren't reviewing the
it also tracks browser features so that web developers can make informed design decisions. Analytics will tell you the screen resolution and connection speed of your visitors, as well as whether or not their browsers support Flash and Java.
Damnit no. How many times does this need to be explained?
You know my screen resolution? Great. I a) surf non-maximised, b) surf with a sidebar open, c) use two monitors, or d) all of the above.
You know my connection speed? Great. I'm now using my favourite P2P application, so my web browsing only gets a fraction of my available bandwidth.
You know that my browser supports Flash and Java? Great. I have them installed for the stupid little games people email me on Fridays. I don't want Flash or Java as parts of web pages, just as content delivery mechanisms.
This isn't even taking into account that it's impossible to measure these things to a known degree of accuracy. Sorry, the web isn't built to allow these kinds of things. You can make educated guesses, sure, but you have no way of knowing how close those educated guesses come to the truth, which makes them, for all intents and purposes, useless.
None of these things allow web developers to make informed decisions. One of the fundamental principles of web design is that your designs have to be flexible enough to take into account all kinds of different constraints. Not surprisingly, wannabes don't want to go to that kind of effort, so they prefer to stick their heads in the sand and pretend like these numbers mean something. "95% of people have a 1024x768 screen, so I don't have to bother with making my design work for lower resolutions" and other such inanity. Grow the fuck up.
I am amazed time and again as Google finds segments in the market and exploits them. Now they are after web analysis, and not only do they provide a service, but they gain insight into how their competitors send traffic to your site. This is even better than just hosting, as you will get many people and companies that pay for hosting elsewhere, but will use GA to analyze traffic/logs.
Google is web-omnipresent