I was reading a post by a very excited Active Rainer this morning. She just discovered Google analytics.
So I began to wonder: Could Google be lying to you whenever it's convenient?
Think about that for a minute.
How do you really *know* you're getting the traffic they say you are? Do you believe everything you read? How can you tell Google is giving you the truth every time you get a Google Urchin Analytics report about your website traffic?
And that's the rub: You can't.
Google is in the business of making money. The more creative they spin their marketing message -- the more apt you are to buy their product.
But Google Analytics is free, right?
Google free tools, or Google Kool Aid means once you start drinking the free stuff, you eventually get back to Google and start buying the stuff they sell. Ergo, you get Google Analytics for free. But you get emails telling you that if you do this or that and PAY for Google AdWords... okay, okay you start to see my drift here.
We used Google Analytics until about a year ago.
Google bought out a firm called: Urchin and this is what became Google Analytics.
The simple fact is, that Google operating as both a PPC (Pay Per Click Adwords) service and having analytics from the *SAME* company can be a conflict of interest -- and you'll never know about it.
Here's how I found out the ugly truth.
When Google had some problems last year, (financially) they sent out a blast of emails to select subscribers who used Google AdWords. I was one of them.
Since I have two books published on real estate marketing and one entirely devoted to SEO, the email I received from Google was more than disturbing. I was furious. My websites are 100% optimized and ranked page one #1 on three search terms. It's like Google telling Danny Sullivan or Bruce Clay what key words they can tweak to bring in more traffic.
Are you kidding me? A stupid machine spits out an automated email telling two of the most gifted SEO and Internet Marketing people on the planet how to tweak their website to get 30% more traffic. The mere idea of Google sending out an email to Danny or Bruce or Bart is an insult to our intelligence at best.
Our firm was running a "special" and for one key word phrase, I was not ranking high enough, but was ranking naturally page one but #9. So I set my ad budget for one search term, and bid .45 cents a click which put me on top of the page in the top LEFT featured spot.
The Google email told me that if I increased my ad spend by $8 a day, their chart showed me I could net 30% more leads.
Okay. Voyager360.com has been page one #1 and page one #2 on Google for 7 years for 90% of the search terms I already had covered.
We get 30 leads a week (minimum) on our natural #1 ranking key word searches now, so increasing my ad spend by 8 bucks a day would not have increased my traffic to the levels that Google was telling me. I had caught Google in a bold face lie.
Have you heard of Kayyah.com? It's a consumer and regular MLS portal. We built it in 2005. It's page one #1 and page one #2 right now for the key word: international MLS.
According to Urchin (which I still run on several of our servers), we get a boatload of traffic every month.
If I install Google Analytics (the same thing as Urchin) on Kayyah, Google reports that we get a fraction of this traffic (above).
I can allow for a few changes in reports and how things are reported, but when I install VisiStat on Kayyah, it reports about the same number of hits and unique visits as Urchin reports.
The question I keep asking myself is: How can Google be 70% off the stats being reported by Urchin (the same software they bought out). I am looking at the logs and the traffic being pumped out the door every week. The average user is spending 8 minutes on Kayyah. And Kayyah.com in my opinion really stinks and we know this. We are changing Kayyah now and changing the name to: FindBuyMove.com and we are adding a free listing syndicator to the site with HD virtual tours at the end of this month.
Since many ActiveRainers do not have page one ranking (naturally) you wouldn't have any idea whether such an email from Google is giving you the facts or not.
So think about this:
- Google sends out 30 million emails just to businesses, including agents and broker offices.
- Assume that 50% of them will never open the email.
- Assume that only 5% of them take any action and follow the advice and INCREASE their ad spend by $8 a day.
- This is 2.5 million X $8 a day = $20 million a day or $600 million a month.
It's really easy for Google to tweak their algorithm and get more money whenever they want. The same applies to Microsoft with (Yahoo and Bing!) so my advice to you is to assume they're lying to you when it's convenient.
When Google wants more money, this is all they have to do. Send an email out to 50 or 100 million businesses and tell you to increase your ad spend by $8 bucks and ta-daaaaaa. Google knows the law of averages. A certain percentage will always respond.
Because Google can do this without anyone ever knowing it -- this becomes a huge conflict of interest. Google can do AdWords Pay Per Click but offering both PPC and a way of tracking your leads can be perverted whenever the CEO sees a crappy Profit and Loss statement for the previous quarter.
Think about that, the next time Google sends you an email asking you to increase your "daily ad spend," on AdWords to increase your traffic.
And when you think about that question, take a look at VisiStat.
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