Google Analytics Reviews & Insights

Score7.9 out of 10

3,824 Reviews and Ratings

Community insights

TrustRadius Insights for Google Analytics are summaries of user sentiment data from TrustRadius reviews and, when necessary, third party data sources.

Pros

Customer Behavior Understanding: Users have praised the ability to understand customer behavior and preferences through web analytics, helping them optimize marketing campaigns.

Issue Identification and Fixing: Reviewers find the feature of identifying and fixing issues on websites to be highly valuable.

Integration with Google Services: Customers appreciate the seamless integration with other Google services like BigQuery and Google Ads, which provides a comprehensive analytics solution.

Custom Reports Creation: Users value the ability to create custom reports based on specific use case requirements for tailored insights.

Export Functionality: The option to export reports for custom analyses is highly valued by users for further data exploration.

Google Analytics Reviews

9 Reviews

Mid-sized Companies (51-1,000 employees)

Videos

A powerful, FREE tool to take the pulse of your inbound audience

Rating: 10 out of 10

December 18, 2014

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Google Analytics was used within my organization to track our website's traffic. The metrics that we gathered and reviewed included CTR, unique visitors, pages viewed and time spent on the site. It was used primarily by the marketing department with relevant information relayed to sales. We didn't use it to address business problems per se, but rather to calculate the effectiveness of our marketing campaigns through web traffic.

Pros

Detailed breakdown of web traffic by any specified length of time (could for correlating with campaigns)
Time on site, % New Visits and Bounce Rate help qualify potential customers
Ease of Use! Very intuitive and well laid out

Cons

It would be nice if the free version had more tracking tools, but that is understandable.
I am unsure of the turnaround of analytics data for free users. Even premium accounts will not see immediate turnaround.
Multiple variations of a keyword may often be reported but you must manually group them together in reporting which could become tedious. Ex. Organic keywords searched that include: Startec, Startech, Starteck will all be compounded separately even though all searches were variations of the company name.

Likelihood to Recommend

One scenario for which I found this service particularly well suited was for tracking and calculating ROI on trade show spending. For example a company may purchase banner ad space for a trade show and have site links included at the end of an attendee email. Using Google Analytics you can measure the traffic from the trade show homepage (referral) and the CTR/time spent from the email links.
While this service is very impressive for one that is free it is far from all encompassing. While the platform reports data it is not an all in one tool that allows you to monitor how your actions directly influence inbound web participation.

Patrick Buffum

Marketing Communications Analyst in Marketing at Avtec Inc. (Computer Software, 51-200 employees)

Vetted Review

2 years of experience

Google Analytics

Rating: 7 out of 10

September 26, 2014

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Google Analytics is being used for: customer visits tracking, conversion rate calculation and event tracking over [our] website.

Pros

Describes overall page visits
Describes how many placed orders
Specific events can be added depending on the merchant need

Cons

Maybe it can be extended by providing more ways of capture and more ways of reporting

Likelihood to Recommend

Google Analytics is free and developer friendly to work with.

Verified User

Professional in Engineering (Computer Software company, 201-500 employees)

Vetted Review

5 years of experience

Use Google Analytics and Get to Work

Rating: 9 out of 10

May 30, 2014

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We're a B2B/B2C hybrid, and we use Google Analytics as a way to understand traffic source, conversion, order value and all ecommerce metrics. This also helps us understand the greatest marketing effort in brick and mortar. I also use it to understand +/- by key dates, periods and sales events. I oversee all marketing and ecommerce, and these are the only departments using Google Analytics.

Pros

Great way to comp dates and events without pulling internal reports.
My internal reporting is less than stellar, so I use GA to reference AOV and conversion rates.
I use GA to identify traffic sources, which helps me understand where to spend my marketing budget as well as the effectiveness of campaigns, social media posts, etc.

Cons

I've had a handful of occasions where I get an error, a la "data unavailable" or temporary outage. It generally remedies itself, but when I'm asking for date I'm not in a waiting mood.
When comping dates, I'd like more than one range available. For example, if I want to comp this week vs last week, I also want to see this week vs last week vs same period last year vs another week last year (in order to account for shifts in holidays etc)

Likelihood to Recommend

Let's face it. Marketers and business analysts will never say "that's too much information" and will always ask for more. In my experience, the folks asking for more generally don't know what to do with the info they have, and asking for more is just a smokescreen to put off making a decision. GA provides a fantastic overview with all the key points necessary to make a decision, independent of on-site software for click stream tracking and customer behavior. That includes traffic sources, conversion rates, AOV, comp comparisons, total traffic by date and time range, and all major decision enablers.

Curt Craighead

Vice President of Marketing and eCommerce in Marketing at 180s (Consumer Goods, 51-200 employees)

Vetted Review

2 years of experience

Google Analytics Review

Rating: 10 out of 10

May 17, 2014

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

I work at a digital ad agency, so nearly everyone at my organization uses it. We are a very goal driven company, so this product allows us to answer questions that aids in hitting our clients goals.

Pros

User interface is intuitive
Sub domain tracking is easy to set up
MCC is easy to manage

Cons

Attribution funnel analyses are fun to play with, but it would be more beneficial to have recommendations of which funnel makes the most sense for each business and when they'd want to apply each model
Universal Analytics does not have the ability to import historical data from the regular GA yet. This will be necessary for my clients before I switch them over because we do a lot of year over year comparisons.

Likelihood to Recommend

All conversions are reported at the time of conversion, not click, so this does not match up with AdWords. SiteCat is the main competitor and while I believe it gives more and better data, the implementation process is longer and more difficult. How much time are you willing to invest?

Verified User

Account Manager in Marketing (Marketing and Advertising company, 51-200 employees)

Vetted Review

3 years of experience

Matthew's Review of Google Analytics

Rating: 9 out of 10

May 16, 2014

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Currently I would say GA is being underutilized by my current organization. At my last organization GA and Site Cat were heavily relied upon for both reporting and informing our marketing decisions. We used GA to set up goals and track conversions. We also looked at high level metrics for our clients' sites like unique visits, time on page, pages per visit, etc. For our e-commerce clients we also used GA to track Revenue and ROI. GA was used by every department of our company.

Pros

Conversion Tracking- GA is able to accurately track conversions by placing a conversion pixel on a 'Thank You' or successful transaction page.
Real Time Analytics- If you are implementing code and need to see how things are tracking in real-time, GA allows you to have this view
Evaluating Traffic Sourced - If URLs are properly tagged and you are familiar with marketing budgets allocated to different channels (paid search, SEO, display, etc.) you can clearly see where you are getting your bang for your buck

Cons

Pathing - GA doesn't give the most robust information when it comes to tying in the path of the customer to final conversion. Longer conversion paths are much harder to track with GA than with a more robust solution like Site Catalust
Training - The training and education materials provided by Google are great for remedial users, however I always felt they could provide more real-world type scenarios and exercises for more advanced users
Accuracy/Discrepancies with other Google products- I had a few bad experiences where data from DFA never seemed to quite match up with what we were seeing in GA. As these are both Google products, you'd think there would be more consistency.

Likelihood to Recommend

If you have a very robust website and several different offline and online channels you'd like to track, I would suggest using Site Catalyst over Google Analytics. Also, if you don't have a trained staff member it would be very difficult to get full use out of this product. In most cases I would still recommend GA.

Verified User

Account Manager in Customer Service (Marketing and Advertising company, 51-200 employees)

Vetted Review

4 years of experience

Helping This Nonprofit Make Decisions

Rating: 9 out of 10

May 13, 2014

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Google Analytics regularly, as it's integrated with our website platform. We utilize it to track visits and interactions with our various programs, as well as overall website analytics.

Pros

Visualization - having the visuals helps me with explaining our web marketing efforts to our senior leadership team.
Specific details - we're currently concentrated in one area, but our advocacy expands to national efforts. Seeing traffic data influences our strategic plans for growth.
Integration - we utilize multiple google products, which makes the using Google Analytics and other Google products a seamless user experience.

Cons

More dynamic visuals

Likelihood to Recommend

Verified User

Manager in Marketing (Mental Health Care company, 501-1000 employees)

Vetted Review

3 years of experience

Google Analytics Has Transformed the Way We Do Business

Rating: 10 out of 10

May 3, 2014

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Using web analytics is critical in understanding how people use your website. Whether you are trying to analyze customer behavior, find out how people are navigating to your website, or even success of marketing campaigns, Google Analytics has proven to be an essential tool that I use on a daily basis.

Pros

Evaluate the success of marketing campaigns using conversion tracking.
Monitor sources of web traffic to ensure our organic traffic, PPC advertising, social media campaigns etc. are performing consistently.
Identify emerging markets by monitoring web traffic by country.
Test A/B splits on landing pages. We use Google Analytics to compare performance of each page.
Identify trends by monitoring organic keyword searches.
Evaluate overall performance of website based on traffic tracked in Google Analytics

Cons

My main complaint would be that there is a bit of a learning curve with Google Analytics.

Likelihood to Recommend

Google Analytics is a fantastic tool for web analytics, especially when you're working with a limited budget.

John Loftis, CFE

Product Marketing Manager in Product Management at Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (Professional Training & Coaching, 51-200 employees)

Vetted Review

4 years of experience

Analyze This

Rating: 9 out of 10

April 30, 2014

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Google Analytics is used by multiple departments to quantify data and measure success, ROI and productivity. By far the biggest user of the platform is our marketing team. We use Google Analytics to track not only web traffic but also pay-per-click ROI, traffic patterns, content popularity and much more. Our social media team is able to leverage Google Analytics to determine the best time to post, measure effectiveness of social marketing campaigns and much more.

Pros

Incredible customization
Wide variety of data sources
Free, can't beat the price!

Cons

The user interface could use a refresh, it can be hard to find what you are looking for at times
Better sorting options for data, it can be a pain at times to narrow down the data you really need

Likelihood to Recommend

I highly recommend every user of Google Analytics to complete the Google Analytics Platform Principles course offered by Google for free each year. This will greatly increase your knowledge of the platform, expertise and make it much easier to create custom data sets and reports. I believe Google Analytics is an essential part of every company's data toolset.

Shane Hayes

CIO (Chief Information Officer) in Corporate at Net Claims Now (Internet, 51-200 employees)

Vetted Review

6 years of experience

Google Analytics

Rating: 8 out of 10

February 25, 2014

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Google Analytics gave my clients key insights into the audience and traffic coming to their site. It helped inform my clients SEO, SEM, display, search and social marketing efforts. It was easy to use and it helped address the issues of increased bounce rate and lowering site traffic.

Pros

Ease of use
Actionable insights

Cons

Who is the actually the audience- siteographic information

Likelihood to Recommend

Well Google Analytics is free for everyone with a website so I would suggest everyone use it. There is no real risk involved in the selection period.

Verified User

Account Manager in Marketing (Internet company, 201-500 employees)

Vetted Review

3 years of experience

Video reviews

View playlist