Happy Birthday Google Analytics

On November 14, 2005, Google began to make Google Analytics available to the public. The deal, of course, is that in return for obtaining googols of data from trillions of web pages, they would offer this intelligently-featured website performance monitoring software. Already in the business of scouring the internet universe for signs of intelligent content, minding website visits and stalking inbound links was a natural outgrowth in Google’s pursuit of becoming the Matrix. OK, I’ll put my paranoia aside. But I’m just saying.

The Smoking Gun

As an engineer, website monitoring metrics has always fascinated me. And as a marketer, the data has always informed me. Historically, I’ve had to study arcane and voluminous data spewing from web server reports. It’s been sort of like touring the engine room of an old steamship. I’ve carefully tip toed around bandwidth usage, server error and pages not loaded reports to mine nuggets of useful marketing stuff. Or maybe it’s like doing a stool analysis. Lots of crap and a few scraps of insight. No wonder few people pursued this endeavor.

Early Google Analytics Dashboard offered a "Marketer" view

My first Google Analytics dashboard actually had a drop down option reading “Marketer”. Woo hoo! From this pre-selected and compiled set of data, I was brought a million miles closer to my objective. This was to answer the question, “What the hell is going on here and how can I make it better.” Given my personal flair for evangelism, I was even more excited that I had the tool to push on every person I knew while liberally using the expression, “free”. “Hey, you’ve got to have this. It’s free.”

Are You Paying Attention

So armed with “free,” we’ve been pushing Google Analytics on all our clients and everyone we know. It is a standard offering of our website builds. But having the information is not the same as bringing this in to strategic business processes. Since today is Google Analytics 4^th birthday, I’m going to make a birthday wish: If you are a website publisher, make a commitment to understanding the performance of your website. Tie your site’s performance to your organization’s mission or business objectives. Make it work harder for you. The tools are in your hands. And they’re free.