How reliable is the data & insights we can gather from Google Analytics?

Google Analytics measures web visitor engagement for millions of websites across the world, 29,134,826 to be precise, and that number is only growing! But exactly how accurate is Google Analytics and the data gathered? And can it be trusted?

Google Analytics, or GA as the pros like to call it, is an invaluable tool for SEO and UX. Google Analytics allows you to track users’ information from your website as well as how they navigate once they’ve landed, which pages, buttons or posts they engage with and the overall volume of traffic to the site.

Why is tracing all this so important you may ask? Well as our resident data expert Chris Hirlemann says:

“If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it”.

How can you expect to understand your customers’ journey if you are not tracking the crucial data! But why might your data not be accurate?

Implementation

The setup process to Google Analytics, or implementation, is often the phase where you may unknowingly create more problems than you hope to solve. Making sure your Google Analytics account is implemented on your site correctly is imperative for collecting correct data.

A lot of problems that people and businesses run into with Google Analytics is a result of improper implementation. One that comes up a lot is tracking codes that have been added twice to each page, that will dramatically shift your traffic data!

Another thing to watch out for is data sampling which can occur in ad-hoc reports when sessions are over 500K at the property level for the date range you are using.

If you are struggling with the setup of Google Analytics then check out these Five Common Google Analytics Setup Mistakes.

Implementation

The setup process to Google Analytics, or implementation, is often the phase where you may unknowingly create more problems than you hope to solve. Making sure your Google Analytics account is implemented on your site correctly is imperative for collecting correct data.

A lot of problems that people and businesses run into with Google Analytics is a result of improper implementation. One that comes up a lot is tracking codes that have been added twice to each page, that will dramatically shift your traffic data!

Another thing to watch out for is data sampling which can occur in ad-hoc reports when sessions are over 500K at the property level for the date range you are using.

If you are struggling with the setup of Google Analytics then check out these Five Common Google Analytics Setup Mistakes.

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