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After recent webanalytics bashing over at Venturebeat
I decided to add my 2 cents to the debate: |
Third party webanalytic tools like Quantcast, Compete, Alexa.. will never deliver great accuracy as long as no tracking code is added to every single page.
Webanalytics tools like Google Analytics, Websidestory, Omniture… will also never be 100% accurate sources. Tor software, logfiles/Javascripts/Hybrid measurement, Cookie deletion, robots, spiders and many other things can delute the data.
So what can we do? Bash the young webanalytics industry and bait plenty of links or use the given tools as good as we can? I believe second option is better.
Third party tracking tools give you an idea about what is going on. If third-party numbers from Streetfire are off with one(!) of the tools…who really cares?
As an advertiser I have plenty of other options to measure the quality of their traffic.
The site owners also have the option to look at their own also not 100% accurate Google analytics numbers.
This heated debate reminds me of the early search engine days. Everybody complaint that they don’t get ranked on top, but nobody did optimize their site. Nowadays it is the “unreliable” webanalytics industry, and still people don’t try to improve their situation (e.g. display stats on the website, track the website with several free tools, compare and merge third-party numbers…). Next…
