Digital State Consulting

Google Analytics has come under fire from the co-founder of another large website analytics site, an Israel-based company, who have claimed that the service’s methods of calculating the time spent by visitors on sites is inaccurate.

This is not good news for digital marketing companies, who often use Google’s software to analyse their clients’ sites. The search marketing will be watching this situation very closely and will want to know what Google are going to do to rectify the situation. If this is not done to many search engine optimisers very high standards, then some SEO firms may switch to other analytic software packages.

In an interview with Practice Ecommerce, Tal Schwartz remarked that, although most of his employees use Google Analytics and tend to be “big fans”, its strategies for computing time on page and time on site are limited.  The time on page function is crucial for some firms, especially those who are directly involved in online retail. Some of the larger organisations will be watching this story develop and may want their search marketing companies to switch the analytics software.

This, he noted, is a major problem for ecommerce businesses as “the time on page provided by Google only refers to multiple-page visitors” and it also provides “no information about how long your visitors actually interact with the content on your website.” Google is also considering extending its’ time on page options so that more detail is available for its users.

Commenting on this, Mr Schwartz stated that if those involved in online PR are serious about improving conversions, they must ascertain how surfers are using their web-based material. This is because the method of which the users are surfing can affect the results obtained through Google’s software program.

Earlier this month, Chris Boggs, an expert in this field, suggested that new comments tool Google Sidewiki will not have an effect on organic search engine rankings in the near future. This is another hot topic in the search marketing world and can be discussed in another article on the search marketing group site.