Using website analytics is an important part of a successful Internet marketing campaign. When looking for an analytics solution, there is a lot to consider. One of the decisions you’ll have to make is whether or not to use a free service, like Google Analytics or a paid service such as HitsLink. While free may seem to be always the best price, it’s also true that you often get what you pay for.
If you just want to know the basics, and can’t fit HitsLink into your budget, Google Analytics may be right for you. However, as you will see here, there are many advantages of using HitsLink over Google Analytics.
- Unbiased Results. Because Google makes most of their revenue from advertising, they have incentive to overstate their results. Google also profits from click fraud, meaning they often won’t report it. Google is also biased when it comes to charging for AdWords. When using Google Analytics, Google knows how much you make with every click, and can charge you more if they know you are likely willing to pay it.
- Privacy. Google Trends will share (with your competition!) your website traffic, visitor locations, and the search terms used to find your website.
- Google Can Use Your Data Against You. When a customer visits your website, Google stores the website visit, and the keywords they searched for. The next time that customer gets online, there will be ads based on the data from their visit to your website, meaning there will be ads from your competitors.
- Can Prevent Click Fraud. Click fraud is where someone (or a computer program) clicks on a PPC ad for the sole purpose of generating a charge per click, without having any interest in visiting the site. HitsLink can track and monitor this for you.
- Results in Real-Time. Google Analytics refreshes their results every 24 hours, while HitsLink refreshes results in real-time.
- Daily Backups. HitsLink does daily backups of your data. Google offers no such guarantee on how often, or if at all, they backup your data.
- Customer Support. The HitsLink support staff is available via email and phone, while Google does not offer any free customer support.
- More Detailed Information. HitsLink provides more detailed information than Google Analytics. HitsLink can provide you information on who visits your site, how they found you, how they navigate your site, whether or not they made a transaction, and how effective your advertising is.
- Different Versions to Fit Your Needs. Depending on how much you want to spend, and what type of information your company needs regarding your website, there are three different versions of HitsLink to choose from.
- Report Customization. You can customize your report to suit your needs and make accessing your data easy.
While Google Analytics might be a good option for a small company with a small budget, for most businesses HitsLink is clearly the preferred option. Google Analytics does provide you with some good information, the privacy issues and inaccurate results due to bias make this analytics tool not worth the risk. A tool like HitsLink can help you with the success of your Internet marketing campaign much more effective than Google Analytics.
Late last month, Google co-founder Sergey Brin made a rare appearance at the Web 2.0 Summit and answered a few questions. Google’s founding team of Brin and Larry Page don’t really get out much, so Brin’s surprise visit was less of a typical Q-and-A session and more of an event. He answered a range of important questions, commenting on Google’s AdWords structure to his company’s relationship with Twitter. For anyone involved in 
As anyone in 
