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

19 Reviews

Product Management

Videos

If You're Technically Inclined or Seeking A Free Robust Solution, Google Analytics May Be The Right Fit

Rating: 8 out of 10

Incentivized

February 2, 2016

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

As a freelance marketing consultant, I recommend using Google Analytics to track website activity. It helps us see how visitors are getting to the website, what they're doing while there there and how long they're staying. It is installed across my websites as well as most of my clients. Ultimately, the tool gives us metrics to see how effective our various digital marketing efforts are impacting our prospects and clients.

Pros

It provides a depth of information and insight. There is more information than anyone could realistically harness themselves.
It's easy to install and start using.
It integrates into other reporting tools fairly easily.

Cons

Spam traffic is a big nuisance and they've yet to really do anything about it.
The reporting is clunky and hard to setup.
Sometimes it more complicated then it seems it ought to be.

Likelihood to Recommend

Google Analytics is a great tool for any new business website or personal blogger. It is easy to install and free to use so it tends to be a great starter resource.

If you are less technically inclined, I'd recommend finding something easier to use. Some of the terminology and interface can be confusing at times.

Jason Montoya

Servant Leader in Customer Service at JasonScottMontoya.com (Marketing and Advertising, 1-10 employees)

Vetted Review

10 years of experience

View profile

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

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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

A Free Resource with In-Depth Reporting Power

Rating: 8 out of 10

December 17, 2014

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Google Analytics is being used by the Digital team who reports on website traffic for our business' 5 websites, and then those reports are distributed throughout the business to the respective "owning" departments.

Pros

Free Product - A great benefit of Google Analytics is that it is a free product that has many capabilities. It performs the functions we need it to without additional fees.
Event Tracking - this is a wonderful feature of Google Analytics that allows us to track many different kinds of user interactions on our sites.
Sources - Google Analytics provides the sources from which users came to our sites, which allows us to use Google Analytics as a kind of lead generation platform for two of our sites, from which we can build relationships with others sites that link to us.

Cons

Session Duration - Google Analytics' Session Duration calculation is not very accurate, since it only measures the duration of time between interactions on the site. The first interaction is page load, but then if the user spends 5 minutes on that one page and reads it thoroughly, receives the information they need, and leaves the site, since they are counted as a "bounce", their session duration is 0, even though they were engaged. They only triggered one event (page load) before leaving the site, so their session duration didn't calculate as it should. There are methods to implement timers, etc. however, the standard Session Duration numbers could be inaccurate without implementing other methods in place.
One Page Sites - we have one Single Page Site, and installing Google Analytics to give us accurate numbers was more difficult than we anticipated. One challenge was creating a way to record bounces correctly, since a users could visit the site, be fully engaged, and leave the site without ever triggering an event. We used Google Tags to create scrolling and menu event tracking to solve this problem, but out-of-the-box, Google Analytics is not the most accurate reporting tool for a One Page Site.

Likelihood to Recommend

It just depends on the needs of the user. For One Page Sites, it will need more tailoring and work when implementing tracking; however, with standard multi-page sites, it is a good, free resource that provides reporting that can be very useful for a company.

Verified User

Employee (Public Relations and Communications company, 11-50 employees)

Vetted Review

1 year 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

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

Google Analytics Review

Rating: 10 out of 10

May 17, 2014

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

We frequently setup and install GA for clients on their eCommerce stores, including eCommerce transaction and conversion tracking, site search, funnel visualization, etc.

Pros

If implemented correctly, GA is a very powerful tool that can give you vital business metrics, especially in conjunction with eCommerce and overall marketing campaigns

Cons

Updating users and developers with new features, new implementation techniques, etc. Google tends to push out new things without updating users or developers, which has the potential to break things or make previous GA setups fail.

Likelihood to Recommend

Wouldn't run without some sort of Analytics program - if not GA then another solution.

Sabine Sharp

President in Professional Services at Glendale Designs (Internet, 1-10 employees)

Vetted Review

9 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

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