I still refuse to use GA. There's literally no reason to, it's your own god damn site data.
Why give it up, and for what some fancy reports? Even with legit branded sites....
Much rather spend the extra $$/month and get my own, and maintain my privacy.
I can't control my privacy that much online, but no matter what I retain full control of my business.
Quite literally most every major website and digital marketing agency disagrees with you on your first point.
TechCrunch.com said:
<!-- Google Analytics -->
<script type="text/javascript">
var gaJsHost = (("https:" == document.location.protocol) ? "https://ssl." : "http://www.");
document.write(unescape("%3Cscript src='" + gaJsHost + "google-analytics.com/ga.js' type='text/javascript'%3E%3C/script%3E"));
</script>
<script type="text/javascript">
try {
var pageTracker = _gat._getTracker("UA-991406-1");
pageTracker._trackPageview();
} catch(err) {}</script>
Newegg:
Newegg.com said:
<script type="text/javascript">
var _gaq = _gaq || [];
_gaq.push(['_setAccount', 'UA-1147542-1']);
_gaq.push(['_setDomainName', '.newegg.com']);
_gaq.push(['_trackPageview']);
(function() {
var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true;
ga.src = ('https:' == document.location.protocol ? 'https://ssl' : 'http://www') + '.google-analytics.com/ga.js';
var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s);
})();
</script>
I could go on and on, but Google Analytics is pretty much the best web analytics tool in the world, and it's free. If you're running a website and you're not using it, I hope you've spent millions developing your own software to analyse your stats in a more precise way.
All the alternatives I've tried don't even come close.
I have clients who I've integrated Google Analytics with call tracking and their CRM systems. With that I can tell for every single client exactly where they came from down to the keyword they typed into google, the number of visits they made to the website and from where each of those visits came to put a value on that directory listing they're paying $300/yr for, or that affiliate that is supposedly introducing a customer to them. Heck you can see how your blog posts are assisting in conversions, determine which pages best assist in conversions and use it to structure your entire site and demote/promote pages.
The filtering, multi channel funnel analysis and other advanced tools are a godsend, and you pay big $$$ for some of the features in analytics if you were to pay for your tracking software.
What are you using for tracking? Statcounter? (Provides shit all in terms of analytics). Perhaps Clicky? (Closer, but still a mile away from Analytics - stuff like heat tracking is done better by other specialist providers anyway e.g. clicktale).
Google doesn't have motivation to do what you think they do with your data. If they were using your data to punish your websites, how long do you think Analytics would last? There'd be one hell of a correlation between sites running Analytics and sites getting smacked, which I don't see, for example. Then, there'd be the legal problems when it all got aired out by some employee that doesn't quite care enough about his job.
You guys can continue to run your lesser alternative analytic packages from now until forever if you want, but I'll keep on using the best, and deriving the obvious business benefits I get from doing so.