Comments on: Google Analytics v Urchin

By: PPC News Roundup for July 15, 2008 | The Adventures of PPC Hero

PPC News Roundup for July 15, 2008 | The Adventures of PPC Hero — Mon, 29 Sep 2008 02:58:05 +0000

[...] over at PushONline Marketing has a great post on the differences between Google analytics and Urchin. If you use either, you may find her post incredibly useful and [...]

By: Katrina Gallagher

Katrina Gallagher — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 19:08:49 +0000

Well… to be honest I’m happy with Google Analytics. It can drive me crazy sometimes, but it’s such a powerful tool and is great for small to medium sized businesses because it’s free.

I think Roy and Simon prefer Hitslink, because although it’s not free, it is cost effective and give you access to realtime stats. I wasn’t keen on this tool, but recently it’s been updated with more of a flexible/graphical interface.

I think we’ll be sticking to Google Analytics for the time being…

By: Jamie

Jamie — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 13:29:50 +0000

Kat, Great Article.

We’re in the process of moving our clients from server based WebTrends to GA. The clients would only get monthly reports that they had access to as a pdf, so in comparison they love this one. I think that GA is great compromise if you dont want to install and maintain the full blown Urchin package.

I can see the benefit in Urchin to agencies who make their money by being able to show graphs and data that proves an increase in traffic.

So have you paid for it and will you be using it in the future?

By: Katrina Gallagher

Katrina Gallagher — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 10:17:46 +0000

Oh thank you, the ego has landed!
K

By: Nina

Nina — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 10:12:15 +0000

You are certainly knowledgeable Kat!

By: Katrina Gallagher

Katrina Gallagher — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 14:09:39 +0000

Thanks Julia,

They sound like they’re worth looking into.

The hard part about moving away from Google Analyics is that it has such good integration with AdWords and it’s free.

But it’s definitely annoying having to wait 3 hours or more for your data – especially if you’re testing out some new filters or are adding E-commerce tracking!

Cheers for the comment,

By: Katrina Gallagher

Katrina Gallagher — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 14:06:38 +0000

Thanks Beth,
k

By: Julia

Julia — Tue, 22 Jul 2008 13:53:48 +0000

I never got to work with Omniture, and I suppose the biggest difference there may be that you might have to liaise with their representative. But the level of tracking there was quite mind-blowing just a year ago, and I’d imagine they would only improve in a year’s time. So, may be the next one to have a look at.

Statcounter is quite nifty in that it gives you the real-time stats, but then I don’t think it is good for tracking the PPC performance. With Google, there is a 3-hour delay in data, and even then it is sometimes hard to drill down to get more information.

Thanks for the great article.

By: Beth

Beth — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 14:26:06 +0000

Great article!

Thanks!

Beth

By: Katrina Gallagher

Katrina Gallagher — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 10:08:18 +0000

Yes, Urchin has the massive advantage of real time reporting, but it’s not for the faint hearted. The install and maintenance is much more complex than the copy & paste job for Google Analytics.

But a great advantage for agencies is that you can customise your reports – re-wording, re-organising and co-branding. And graphs are vector based graphics, so you can blow them up on a massive presentation screen or poster.

And if you’re doing a Pay Per Click campaign, or even writing pages for an organic effort, you can compare conversion stats for each keyword or phrase used to find your site from the search engines. And Urchin suggests keywords you are not currently taking advantage of.