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Google Analytics and Web 2.0
Introduction
Google Analytics is a suite of web-based usage analysis services for developers to collect statistics on their websites. In 2005, Google purchased a web analytics firm named Urchin and began offering the services to the general public free of charge. This was unprecedented. At that time, most companies that provided similar services charged anywhere from two hundred up to several thousand dollars a month. As a result, interests have been overwhelming and
Google Analytics has taken a bite out of the market share in web analytics. There are two different approaches in website usage analysis: log file analysis and page tagging. In log file analysis, a software agent is responsible of analyzing log files that are generated by a web server. The type of transactions recorded in the log files is dependent of the type of web server. In page tagging, each page of the website is tagged with a tracker, or several lines of code, usually written in JavaScript. These lines of code make calls to the remote hosting server (e.g. Google) and record each transaction that the web developers have specified. In page tagging, the type of transaction recorded is independent of the type of web server, as long as the tracker can be embedded on each page. Google Analytics falls into the latter category. It collects statistics including visitor / visit characteristics, traffic sources, and content information. Web 2.0 is a term that many developers have become familiar with over the past few years. Is Google Analytics the right fit to provide usage statistics on websites that can be categorized as Web 2.0? This report will address some of the limitations of Google Analytics, in related to Web 2.0. It will also provide some suggestions and recommendations on how any usage analysis software can adapt to accommodate the ever-changing web technologies. Web 2.0
Web 2.0 does not refer to a specific product or technology. It is an approach that technologists have adopted in the past few years in facilitating online collaboration and user-generated content. The result of this approach is a series of “perceived” second-generation websites. These websites can be grouped into the following categories: • Wiki (e.g. Wikipedia)
• Social Networking (e.g. MySpace)
• Blog (e.g. Blogger)
• RSS – Really Simple Syndication (e.g. any News websites)
• Social Bookmarking (e.g. del.icio.us)
• Rich Internet Application (e.g. Google Map) Although the emergence of Web 2.0 has enhanced user experience on the web in general; it however has created a challenge for information architects to organize information for consumption. Web analytic services and software are tools that information architects have utilized to improve the “findability” of information and knowledge on traditional websites. Unfortunately, limitations are noticeable when these same tools are applied in Web 2.0 websites. Google Analytics Limitations
One of the key focuses of Web 2.0 is user-generated content. Just think YouTube. Information flow is no longer unidirectional. Users are empowered with the capability to share and to collaborate information and knowledge with one another in an online platform. However, the dynamic nature of content has made it difficult for tools like Google Analytics to produce useful results. Google Analytics does not store a history of changes to content on web pages. Therefore, a spike in the number of visits to a particular blogging page provides little meaning to the information architects. Rich Internet Applications (RIA) are web-based applications that provide similar user experience as traditional desktop applications. The key behind this enhanced experience is the lack of page refreshes between client and server transactions. The URL in the web browser remains the same throughout the entire visit. An example of an RIA is Google Map. When a user zooms into a particular area of a map, the client browser “silently” communicates with the remote server and updates the detail of the map without refreshing the entire page. This methodology, however, works against how Google Analytics operates. Without any page refresh, Google Analytics does not have any awareness of the transactions that occur between the server and the client. As far as Google Analytics is concerned, there is only a single page visit, even though a user might have spent 30 minutes customizing a laptop on a RIA-enabled website. A third limitation of Google Analytics is its inability to track non-browser activities. Non-browser activities include RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds, file downloads, music and video streaming, and etc. The way Google Analytics monitor activities on a website is based on a tracker that is embedded in the HTML (Hypertext Markup Language) code of a page. This, however, cannot be accomplished in non-HTML files such as an RSS feed and files specifically for download purpose. The impact of this shortfall is tremendous for content providers. For example, a news website may provide an RSS feed for its latest news articles. An RSS feed allows consumers to access the content of the news articles without using a web browser. However, the webmaster of the news website will not be able to retrieve any usage statistics of the RSS feed from Google Analytics. Suggestions / Recommendations
To overcome the challenge of changing user-generated content of website, Google Analytics can implement an archiving functionality that will take periodic snapshots of the content of the web pages. This idea is similar to the Internet Archive (http://www.archive.org). This feature will allow information architects to pinpoint the effect of a specific content change on site visit characteristic. For example, a high exiting rate on a particular web page may indicate that the page has an excessive number of contextual links that direct users to external websites.
As of November 2007, Google has already taken the initiatives to improve its monitoring capability by allowing web developers to track events within a web page. Events include mouse and keyboard activities like clicking on a link or hovering the mouse over an image. This improvement is especially useful for process-oriented activities. By monitoring these additional statistics, developers will grasp a better understanding in usage behavior and will produce a more usable platform for their users.
Lastly, monitoring non-browser activities can be achieved by analyzing the log files stored on the web server. Server-side applications can be developed for each implementation of web server (e.g. Apache) so that the web server will periodically sent Google the necessary log files for monitoring and analysis. This solution, however, is not ideal. Web administrators may refrain from sending the entire log file to Google for security and privacy reason. In addition, this solution is not bandwidth-friendly if the amount of log files generated is excessive. Conclusion
In conclusion, although Google Analytics has taken a giant leap in the field of web analytics, it remains to be seen whether it can be adapted to Web 2.0 technologies. The bright side is that standards are still emerging in both fields, which makes it advantageous to technological frontrunners like Google. Web analytics is crucial for the future of the web; otherwise, the chaotic nature of user-generated content is just beginning.
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 | | adac liked this intel. Feb 17, 2011 |  | | R Foreman liked this intel. Jun 19, 2011 |
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The copyright for this content entitled "Google Analytics and Web 2.0" has been specified by the contributor as:
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This intel was contributed by wyip
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May, 2012
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