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

10 Reviews

Marketing

Videos

A lot of resources for free, but can't always provide the info requested

Rating: 8 out of 10

Incentivized

February 2, 2016

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use Google Analytics to track traffic to our websites, identify segments (e.g. organic, referral, mobile/tablet), track conversion for various goals (lead collection and revenue), monitor use of new features, etc.

Pros

Ability to track web traffic, attribute to sources & mediums.
Ability to segment to view visitors by desktop, mobile, and tablet.
Exporting reports in various formats for different use. Management likes easy to read PDFs, while marketing analysts prefer Excel data.

Cons

So many features that it's hard to keep up.
Sometimes difficult to dig into particular segments or criteria.
Limits in automation of reports, such as time length (no way to set one start date & get automated reports on regular frequency, e.g. Year to Date report weekly, always starting on 1/1 and extending time each week.
It could be better at showing flow/path through site.

Likelihood to Recommend

Benjamin Lipsman

Manager of Internet Marketing in Marketing at Equity LifeStyle Properties (Real Estate, 1001-5000 employees)

Vetted Review

10 years of experience

View profile

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

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

Completely Satisfied

Rating: 10 out of 10

May 21, 2014

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

It is being used by the Search Engine Marketing department to see paid search and organic traffic and revenue.

Pros

Traffic
Goals
Revenue

Cons

Keyword data

Likelihood to Recommend

Google Analytics provides many different options and is well suited for various needs.

Verified User

Account Manager in Marketing (Marketing and Advertising company, 11-50 employees)

Vetted Review

3 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

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: Delivering Day to Day Data

Rating: 7 out of 10

May 7, 2014

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We use it within the marketing department for two separate corporate websites. We mainly monitor Daily Visits, source of the traffic coming to the site (referrals), and what pages are being visited. It helps us measure the effectiveness of our marketing campaigns. Marketing is the only department to have direct access but we do hare the data with other departments. Google is also a client of ours.

Pros

Google does a good job of tracking visits to the website.
I love being able to see the source of the traffic.
Being able to see the behavior of visitors is also of benefit. What pages are people acutally seeing and spending time on?

Cons

I don't like that Google blocks keyword information for organic traffic. About 85% of the keyword information is 'not provided'. I am forced to go to other sources for the keyword information.

Likelihood to Recommend

I cannot think of any.

Verified User

Director in Marketing (Market Research company, 11-50 employees)

Vetted Review

5 years of experience

Google Analytics: Hard to Beat Free.

Rating: 10 out of 10

May 2, 2014

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Google Analytics is currently being used in my organization by the Marketing department to capture overall data on web traffic, determine keywords for SEO, track which pages are most/least trafficked, and where we are losing visitors (bounce rate, exit pages etc). We also track clicks referred by our enewsletter. Google Analytics helps us determine which types of content are popular; which referral sources generate the most traffic; and which navigation paths our users take through our website. We are planning to make use of some of the more advanced features like goal conversion down the line, so we can identify exactly which paths lead to conversion and which keywords are the most valuable for our conversion goals.

Pros

Provides quantitative insight into your web presence. Much of our online marketing would be guesswork without the hard data provided by Google Analytics - and decisions made based on data are generally better decisions.
Integrates different online marketing activities. Through integrating with our enewsletter client and providing data on referral sources like social media, search, and advertising, Google Analytics gives us a broad picture of how our various online activities work together to support our marketing goals.
Shows you where you're weak. The "Behavior Flow" display is a valuable window into how our visitors reach our site, which pages lead them where, and which pages result in exiting our website. This information helps us improve content and readjust our strategy as necessary to make sure the right visitors reach the right content and the right time.

Cons

It's so robust it's scary - I know there are tons more features we could be using to our advantage within the program, but they're too complicated or detailed to access easily.
Permissions are a little wonky. It's hard to authorize multiple users on our team to access the necessary levels within the program, and it's not clear what permissions different users need to make specific changes - until you get an error message saying you're not authorized.

Likelihood to Recommend

There's really no reason not to use Google Analytics. The fact that it's free is incredible - it is the very first program I suggest clients set up to start getting a real handle on their online presence. Just answering simple questions like "Where does my traffic come from?" would be impossible without GA.

Lena Prickett

Marketing Manager in Marketing at Criteria for Success, Inc. (Professional Training & Coaching, 1-10 employees)

Vetted Review

3 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

GA: The Best Free Analytics tool

Rating: 9 out of 10

August 15, 2013

Pros

Great for start-ups to understand what is happening on their site, their traffic sources, conversions, etc.

Cons

Hard to learn with lack of support. You have to really spend a lot of time with it and reading material to learn all the details.

Likelihood to Recommend

Take time to learn about the tool. You can easily be sucked in to implement and begin playing with it but nothing beats understanding what it does and especially how it calculates metrics such as unique visitors, conversion rates, etc.

Verified User

Manager in Marketing (Computer Software company, 1-10 employees)

Vetted Review

1 year of experience

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Video reviews

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Google Analytics: Hard to Beat Free.

Rating: 10 out of 10

May 2, 2014

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Pros

Provides quantitative insight into your web presence. Much of our online marketing would be guesswork without the hard data provided by Google Analytics - and decisions made based on data are generally better decisions.
Integrates different online marketing activities. Through integrating with our enewsletter client and providing data on referral sources like social media, search, and advertising, Google Analytics gives us a broad picture of how our various online activities work together to support our marketing goals.
Shows you where you're weak. The "Behavior Flow" display is a valuable window into how our visitors reach our site, which pages lead them where, and which pages result in exiting our website. This information helps us improve content and readjust our strategy as necessary to make sure the right visitors reach the right content and the right time.

Cons

It's so robust it's scary - I know there are tons more features we could be using to our advantage within the program, but they're too complicated or detailed to access easily.
Permissions are a little wonky. It's hard to authorize multiple users on our team to access the necessary levels within the program, and it's not clear what permissions different users need to make specific changes - until you get an error message saying you're not authorized.

Likelihood to Recommend

Lena Prickett

Marketing Manager in Marketing at Criteria for Success, Inc. (Professional Training & Coaching, 1-10 employees)

Vetted Review

3 years of experience