Forum Moderators: martinibuster
Is it just me, or anybody else agrees that Google Analytics s*cks in many aspects? No offense meant to Google product manager and developers. I am just a bit frustrated with the results that I am not getting from Analytics despite Google keeps pushing us to improve our revenue linking AdSense with Analytics.
One thing that always discouraged me from using it, is that Analytics Flash user interface is so heavy and slow that I usually run out of patience before I get anywhere that can provide me any useful information to improve my AdSense revenue.
Has Google ever thought about dropping altogether that Flash based slow user interface of Analytics, in favor of a totally AJAX based fluid user interface?
Nowadays I use both Analytics and Sitemeter. When I want to check my site audience, Analytics has been totally useless.
Sitemeter is so much more simple and give you details up to the hour, even in the free version. It generates simple but objective charts one click away from the dashboard. Despite the Sitemeter charts are image based, it renders much, much faster than Analytics fancy Flash charts.
If a much smaller company like Sitemeter can provide almost realtime statistics, why can't Google do the same with Analytics? It is certainly not for the lack of money.
I usually follow most Google recommendations on AdSense, so I linked my AdSense account and gave analytics another chance. Maybe I have not studied the subject enough, but I failed to see a clear path between linking AdSense to Analytics and do something to make it help me improving my Adense sites revenue. I admit I may be missing something obvious here, maybe something I did not read but I should.
Anybody with a positive experience could care to explain in a few steps what are the most obvious things to do to improve AdSense revenue benefiting from Analytics?
I have found analytics far from useless. It runs extremely fast on my system - could your slow performance be a connection speed or hardware issue?
I agree with thinker on the performance issue too. Maybe you've got a slow connection or computer. Analytics runs just fine on my machine - no worries there.
I think analytics is awesome, especially how I can see the exact income each page generates without having to use channels. It revealed entire new areas of my site that I never realized were generating income.
For complex things like drawing useful conclusions from linking AdSense to Analytics, Analytics AdSense pages information did not get me anywhere.
That is what Google has been preaching us, link our AdSense account to the Analytics account. I did not find any useful information in Analytics that I did not know before linking to the AdSense account. That is my point.
As for connection speed, I have a 4Mbps cable broadband connection. It is the same connection that I use to access Sitemeter. So it is not of the connection nor my hardware.
It seems the problem is that Analytics Flash charts make it slower than the simple image based Sitemeter charts.
BTW, I am not sure if your exit pages assertion is correct. What I found out a long time ago is that exit pages gets me a greater click-through rate than on non-exit pages. It makes much more sense, because on exit pages the user is leaving the site anyway, so may as well exit clicking the ads.
Interesting, thanks for the heads up. I had not thought of it that way before. On the other hand, all users exit at some point, right? So even if visitors stayed longer, there would still be a higher CTR on exit pages, with more ad impressions in the meantime. Unless, of course, they stay so long they need to leave the computer and just shut down :-) ...
We now rinse and repeat this exercise every few weeks.
