One question we’re asked a lot is:-
“how accurate is Google Analytics data?”
This is a question that is typically followed by something along the lines of:-
“what if visitors have JavaScript or cookies disabled?”
When presented with these questions we have to answer honestly. The fact is that Google Analytics is never going to be 100% accurate. But then, neither is any other web analytics platform. We can carefully plan and install our favoured analytics platform but obsessing about perfect data is a futile exercise.
It’s key that you understand the following:-
1) Platforms such as Google Analytics aren’t designed to audit website visitors. They are designed to identify trends in visitor behaviour that you can then be used to improve the performance of your website.
2) The objective when using any web analytics platform is to collect ENOUGH data about your visitors to make strategic decisions that will improve the performance of your website. The objective is not to attempt to collect every single piece of data about every single visitor. That’s simply not possible.
3) Understand that when using a web analytics platform you have access to a depth and diversity of data that is unparalleled. To add context, consider the fact that decisions are made that impact the viewing habits of 200+ million US residents based on data collected from only 15k – 30k of these people. This equates to only 0.015% of viewers. Even if your analytics platform is “only” capturing data from 80% of your visitors you still have a LOT of data to work with and a level of accuracy that TV channels can only dream of.
Now that you’ve read the above you should have newly added perspective and can log back into your analytics platform with a new perspective. You’re one of the lucky few that have access to a huge amount of data about your customers and if you’re smart this data can be used to perpetually improve your websites performance.
