Omniture falters; Google Analytics a great backup plan
January 28, 2009 – 12:59 pm by Hugo GuzmanA colleague of mine recently passed along a Forbes article that talked about Omniture’s recent troubles with outdated or outright inaccurate data. That got me to thinking about just how valuable a comprehensively implemented Google Analytics platform can be.
Granted, unlike Omniture, which touts its ability to deliver real time data, Google Analytics has a one-day lag (example: Monday data becomes available on Tuesday). That’s still fairly impressive, and definitely gives marketers the ability to quickly react to site traffic and trends. More importantly, because of its relative ease of use and $0 price tag, it’s extremely attractive as a secondary “just in case” source of analytics data. In fact, you can get enterprise level implementation and reporting for a relatively nominal cost.
Our interactive agency’s stance is that even if a client swears by a platform like Omniture, it’s always a good idea to devote the resources needed to ramp up Google Analytics as a backup. And ironically enough, in some cases, the Google Analytics platform ends up becoming the primary option for one reason or another.
8 Responses to “Omniture falters; Google Analytics a great backup plan”
While Google analytics can provide data with a one-day lag, it is unable to provide detailed-session level visitor data. This visitor-level data is crucial for many users of web analytics in order to allow them to execute an effective inbound marketing strategy - like being able to drive real-time personalized offers on their website… (http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.san&art_aid=99287)
I work for a competitor of Omniture - Unica Corporation. Unica’s web analytics solution recently edged out Omniture and Coremetrics as #1 Best Value for Enterprise Web Analytics by Jupiter Research’s most recent Constellation report published in 7/08.
The data quality and latency issues that Omniture users are experiencing are in no small part due to their multi-tenant infrastructure. There are other solutions on the market - like NetInsight - that have a flexible deployment methodology - which allows customers to choose whether they would like to implement the software inside their firewall (on-premise)OR if they would like a hosted (on-demand) solution - the solution is hosted in a single tenant infrastructure.
I noticed this post on Twitter, so i thought I would just put my two cents in. mdonelan@unica.com
http://netinsight.unica.com/
By Maggie Donelan on Jan 28, 2009
Who’s going to back up Google?
http://www.ginside.com/2008/1607/google-analytics-outage/
By Jeff on Jan 28, 2009
Thanks for sharing, Jeff! If anything, this helps drive home the idea of having more than one analytics provider. It’s unlikely that both Google Analytics and another platform (Omniture, etc…) are going to go down at the same time.
By Hugo Guzman on Jan 28, 2009
Good piece of information.
I work for an SEM company as Senior Account Manager. We have been using Omniture, Coremetrics and Google Analytics for our clients (listed in IR500). We also have our inbuilt tracking product as a back up for all our clients. There were instances where in our clients who were using Google Analytics as their primary option wanted to try Omniture, as GA was not accurate and real time (if not after 24 hours, it just has around 4 to 5 hours delay.) We have been hoping to track the records accurately through Omniture (and get the details in time) but in vain. Our records show that both GA and Omniture tracks around 90% of records at max even after 24 hours. Interestingly, these 90% records are of total but not similar (there are records captured by GA but not Omniture and vise a versa.) Considering Omniture’s industry record, we hold back to Omniture tracking but deleted GA’s. We have our own tracking system as a backup though (which proved to be doing better than both these top guns when compared to our clients’ internally tracked records.) Our basic analysis showed that majority of these issues is based on how the cookies are defined. On a whole, YES, Omniture is facing issues with tracking and reporting data in time but is still better than GA. You can have GA as backup but it’s clear that GA can not give as many options as Omniture does for analysis. We are just wondering if there is anything big coming up from Omniture soon. Until then, it is better to depend on your own (or your clients’) internal data for any decisions.
By Punya on Mar 16, 2009
Thanks for the feedback, Punya! Unfortunately, your experience may be isolated and there’s no way for anyone to verify your methodology or possible errors in configuration, etc…
Market research suggests that Google Analytics, on average, is providing more or less the same level of accuracy as Omniture and other providers (no two platforms provide the exact same data set and none are 100% accurate…it’s all about trending) so I don’t think we can use an isolated test like yours as scientific proof of any kind.
By Hugo Guzman on Mar 17, 2009
Hugo -
Where did you get this: “Market research suggests that Google Analytics, on average, is providing more or less the same level of accuracy as Omniture and other providers”?
Do you or anybody have any info on how each analytics provider gathers its data? I looked at GA and it seems that up to a certain point, its cookie-based data. After a certain threshold, the data is statistically calculated for quick reporting.
By xavier on May 11, 2009
Great question, Xavier! I based this on the dozens of clients that we manage analytics reporting for. Often times, these clients will have both Omniture and Google Analytics in place and the variance in data/results is statistically insignificant. In other words, while not identical, both sets of data are fairly similar and satisfactory in terms of analytical value.
It just so happens that Google Analytics is both easier to implement and easier to use.
By Hugo Guzman on May 11, 2009