Google Analytics is a trojan
 

Google Analytics is a traffic trojan horse because it allows Google to tweak the results in real time based on a multitude of factors, GA is a determining factor in your Google ranking based on bounce rate, time on site etc.

For instance one day you could get 200 incoming uniques based around the term "hardcore gay videos" and the time on site is 43 seconds and the bounce rate is in the high 70s within a day or two that grouping of terms will no longer send you uniques because GA is reporting that term is not very effective on your site.

Long story short boycott Google Analytics and save yourself some headaches.

They can tell the time on site / bounce rate without ga, won't make much difference. :2 cents:

I'm not saying to use it.

Good. Better quality content with lower bounce rate and better time on site should get that traffic.

Never used it myself. Always like using my own code.

added to the BlackList

crazy to use it :2 cents:

piwik looks great, thanks

GA lets you improve your site. The better your site is, the better search results Google can provide their customers, and the more they can make from ad revenue. No Trojan - Just brain power at work.

Matt Cutts says they want people to be comfortable using it and for that reason it won't affect your rankings.

Trust me, Google has many other ways to grab your site data.

Using Google Analytics is a POSITIVE, if visitors are bouncing from your site - do something to improve it.



But whatever, boycott Google and become a zillionaire. Let me know how it works out for you. :thumbsup

That looks good, will give it a try.

I no longer use it

God forbid people be encouraged to build good, relevant sites! LOL

Brad

They still have that data through chrome browsers, so using or not using GA won't make a difference.

Seriously..

"Google says my site sucks. I'm going to stop giving them data in order to improve my Google rankings."

.. some logic

Why willingly give them free data when there are perfectly viable alternatives available? Lazy webmasters just want to paste some javascript into a page but aren't willing to install their own stats programs.

Between piwik and server logs you'll have far more accurate and useful data than google analytics can provide. Apathy and/or ineptitude are the only reasons I can think of why people use google analytics.

If people like to use other solutions that they find more accurate and helpful, that's fine of course. But in response to the OP, calling Analytics a trojan and running from the facts is a dumb strategy to boost rankings.

google = skynet

since google changes every week what they consider a "quality" site why give them the rope to hang yourself with?

I use Piwik in addition to GA and Webalizer/AWS. I leave GA off of sites that I know have shit bounce rates but I use it on sites that I know have very low bounce rates and high time on site... just in case, it certainly cant hurt. I hope Google is paying attention to my GA on those sites. It should rank higher in the serps for my keywords than some scrapebox/xrumer spamming jerkoff.

I like Piwik for live results but it isn't as great as people are making it out to be. Although I have yet to try Apache2Piwik. Anyone using it?

using Piwik as well, however I still have GA for some sites...

Not using it :pimp

end of discussion.

if you think you have quality site, then add GA and get even more traffic :)

After I installed GA my SE traffic shot up the next day, that was over a month ago and the SE traffic hasn't gone down since

Matt Cutts is a PR guy and you know they dont tell the truth.

There are no "quality" porn sites in Googles eyes, and most people doing tgps/blogs/etc are TRADING traffic so bounce rate is going to be higher than your average cooking blog.

Oh it certainly can get your new sites indexed faster but there are other methods to do that too, and once Google starts figuring out what keywords they want to display for your site believe me that traffic wont be as heavy, watch your stats go up and down every few months.

Ga
 

I have google analytics on more then 20 sites. Yes, google destroyed me in previous months and even if I 've improved things regarding their guidelines, I am going down every single fucking day. What do you think,should I delete analytics from my sites?

I've only installed GA on one site and it's one that's been live since 2007.

One of the most successful blog networks recently discussed here at GFY does not use Analytics.

Google is far from an unscrupulous company, but I'm pretty sure they're not using Analytics data to influence search results. They can get most of the information they need from other places regardless.

I am not using it. It slows down your site.

I have google analytics in most of my sites including my best ones and have not ever seen it helping or damaging my rankings.

Google can't be using GA as their way to look at bounce rates etc, as most of sites do not use GA.

Same here :)

I do not use. I use server side scripts.

I prefer being spied on by statcounter.

google gave us ga out of the goodness of their hearts. do no evil.

:1orglaugh:1orglaugh:1orglaugh:thumbsup

anyone tried reinvigorate.net ?

How is Piwik on server resources?

i just installed on my server and memory consumption increased ..

I stopped using it. Used quite a bit of my server's resources, especially when it ran its cron jobs, enough that I needed a separate server for it.

Sounds like a few of you need to adjust your mysql config. Also, on older versions of Piwik the default db structure had an indexing mistake that caused trouble.

Those of you with trouble, how much traffic were you throwing at it daily?