Customer Reviews

Google Analytics, 3rd Edition

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(6)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(3)

 

 

Google Analytics is one of the best finds for those of us who find ourselves technically-challenged in a technically-heavy world.

This book covers every possible aspect of Google Analytics. I found the language simple, without talking down to anyone. By the time I had completed it, all my questions were fully answered.

I highly recommend Google Analytics to anyone who wants a down-to-earth explanation of the ins and outs of Google Analytics.

In a nutshell, Google's Analytics service is a web traffic analyzer and marketing performance manager provided for free to anyone with a Google account, but especially geared to those who participate in their AdWords program. This book serves as an introduction and walkthrough guide to Google's Analytics service for those that do not already know about it. The authors have written this title in a in a "for dummies" format, primarily for small web site authors and bloggers that have not had experience in web traffic analysis software before.

Google Analytics is a mixed bag of content, and it is really up to the reader to determine if the amount of time invested reading the book is paying off more than simply scouting Google's Analytics site and reading all of Google's on-line help would. Many chapters are little more than walkthroughs of the Google screens, providing explanations of the obvious, rehashes of the on-line help, and excessive screenshots (often one per page), all of which is very often presented in that cutesy writing style popular today in computer books aimed at beginners. The authors also make the assumption that software in use on their system is in use on yours. As an example, an entire chapter is dedicated to reviewing another web site analyzer, AWStats, without ever actually introducing where it came from, how you can get it, the basic usage of it, etc.

If you do not actually read the book from cover to cover, but rather read only sections relevant to your needs, readers can often find very valuable information. An example of this is chapter 6, "Filtering Your Data", where the authors thoroughly go over not just how to create filters, but how to create more intelligent filters using Regular Expressions, a more difficult topic I was surprised to find handled so well. Because the book is well organized and divided, readers may find that the title can serve as a spot reference for areas within the Analytics service where Google's help is not readily apparent, or where a different phrasing or a specific example is more beneficial.

If you are already successfully using Google's Analytics service or are a more seasoned webmaster, this title will not provide you with additional information or advanced tips. However, if you are new to analyzing web traffic for your small web site or blog, this is a good introduction to Google's service.

As a small business owner I found this book to be very helpful in getting started with Google Analytics. Analytics can be extremely complicated and the

conversational tone of the book makes the topic easier to understand.

I found the examples useful especially where analytics was applied to real world situations. As the owner of a home decor business technology is not my strong suit. So I found this book helpful.

(Disclaimer: I received a free copy from Wiley and was invited to review this book).

As a Web Intelligence professional, I am accustomed to reading very advanced stuff on the topics of Web Analytics. I find it in Eric Peterson's books, a few forums, and several blogs. I do not expect every book treating the topic to be on the bleeding edge of measuring AJAX applications, etc.

That is why I don't understand the harsh comments I read about this book. Yes, it's basic! So what? If you're new to this field, welcome! You're one amongst many.

As a beginner, you will find this book very useful. It will help you get started with Google Analytics, and even get quite good at it, while learning the basics of Web Analytics. I believe the autors succeeded in what they intended to do, which is making a solid introduction book to Web Analytics destined to small businesses.

The book is definitely something for the general webmaster and marketer that signs up for the free Google Analytics service. It provides a good overview over the features of the service and how to use it right. It takes also the guesswork out of options that are not necessarily self explanatory for the marketer that does not juggles with web metrics every day.

For the professional analyst who breathes core metrics and web statistics is the book probably a bit too weak. Okay, the book does claim to be targeting those type of customers.

I would also preferred to see some more details and examples to the filter options provided by Google Analytics which are very powerful. Some more real world examples would not have hurt.

Overall a good and solid book and absolutely worth its price.

(Note: I wasn't going to post this review on Amazon, but as the publishers have picked two words out of it and used them out of context on the page, then I think I should put the record straight and post the whole thing.)

I run a number of web sites and I've been running Google Analytics on many of them for several months, but ever since I started using it, I've been sure that I could probably get a lot more useful information out of Analytics than I am currently doing. Currently I'm only looking at a handful of the huge number of available reports. So when I was offered the chance to review this book, I hoped that it would really open my eyes to the power of Google Analytics.

Reading the book has largely met those goals for me. I now make far better use of Google Analytics. But getting that information out of the book hasn't been a particulary enjoyable experience.

I'm pretty sure that part (if not most) of the problem is that I'm not in the audience that the authors had in mind when they were writing the book. I'm an IT consultant who has been building web sites for over ten years. I've been monitoring web site usage using systems like Webaliser and AWStats for a lot of that time and I've picked up quite a bit of knowledge of web site measurement technology over the years. So when the "Who Should Read This Book" section of the introduction says "Do you have a web site or blog that you'd like to track? Can you control the HTML on that site? If that's you, you've got the right book" then I think that I'm the kind of person that the book is written for. Unfortunately, what that section doesn't say is that if you already have reasonable level of knowledge about how this all works, then you're probably going to find a lot of the book a bit tedious and pointless. The book seems to actually be aimed that the large number of people who have a web site but aren't web industry professionals. I can't complain about that really. That's obviously a much larger market, but I wish that the book's marketing made that a bit clearer. A lot of this books reads like Google Analytics for Dummies and that's not the book that I was looking for.

That's not, of course, to say that it's a bad book. Just that I think its marketing might be mistargetted.

Having mentally reclassified the book as a "for dummies" book I had to try hard to recalibrate my expectations of the book and ignore the classic "for dummies" style of the book. For example the whole book is written in a very "folksy" voice that I find irritating and completely inappropriate for technical books.

The authors also seem to be under the impression that some of the material that they cover will be too hard for their readers. For example, when talking about regular expressions they say "Regex can be pretty confusing, even for experienced users". As a trainer and writer, I know that if you tell someone that a concept is really confusing then you can almost guarantee that they will be confused by it. As a teacher it's your job to make sure that the concepts aren't confusing. Regular expressions are complex, but they follow regular rules (the clue there is in the name) and you really shouldn't need to teach them using an attitude which discourages people from trying to understand them.

But actually I suspect that the reason the authors take this approach with regular expressions is that they themselves don't really understand them. I think this because their examples are all a bit confused and not very well explained at all. For example they have an example which uses the regular expression 690=([^&]*) and nowhere do they take the time to explain what it means or how it works. After reading this section, I'd be surprised if anyone comes out with a clearer understanding of regular expressions than when they went in.

However, the section on regular expressions is by far the most technical part of the book and in the rest of it the authors are on far more solid ground. When explaining all of the reports that you can get from Google Analytics then their explanations get much clearer. This is where the value of the book is to be found. Google Analytics has dozens of reports and the authors clearly understand the data that they all contain and what each report can be used to show about your web site visitors. I found a number of useful reports that I hadn't previously been using and that are now giving me far better information about who is visiting my sites.

In summary, the descriptions of the Google Analytics reports are very useful if you can ignore the over-familiar language, but the sections that contain deep techical detail are patchy at best.

The real value of Google Analytics (the book) is to people who need to measure and analyze the effectiveness of their Web sites, but don't have the technical experience or time to figure out the Google Analytics service on their own. Web sites -- somewhat unfortunately for those of us who have been publishing online for a long time -- are increasingly being published and maintained by people who know how to write, sell, market, or advertise, but don't know any of the technical details behind the sites they are working with. To this growing market of pseudo-technical people, a book like this is as necessary as the service it explains.

If you've already got a Google Analytics account, know how to use it, and aren't concerned that you're getting the most from it, I can't see any reason to recommend this book to you. If, however, you are at all confused by any part of the service, this Google Analytics book is undoubtedly the best resource for you.

Web analytics is a difficult topic to cover. The audience is limited and the information is is hard to understand, but Mary Tyler and Jerri Ledford do a very good job of introducing the basics to the general public.

This books seems to be written for the beginner. Each topic is introduced and explained well, but not with a lot of depth. I especially liked how the terminology is explained with out using a lot of words people out of the industry don't know.

Overall this is a great book to get into the world of analytics. Its is not how ever for the seasoned professional. If have a background in analytics you will find your self thumbing through most of the book for a few good tips that are unique to Google Analytics. But if you are new, you will not be disappointed by this book.

I was very disappointed by this book and regret that I lost my purchase receipt as I am now unable to return it to the bookstore where I bought it. I will put in on my bookshelf as a reminder to not rely on the publisher's imprint (in this case, Wiley) in choosing books to buy.

In order to find the small tidbits of potentially useful information you need to wade through pages and pages of what are, in my opinion, the worst-written technical content ever printed in the English language. The authors apparently assumed that readers would want page after page of overly familiar text that says nothing and delivers even less. After trying to read the first 40 to 50 pages of this book I became annoyed with the over-use of "cutesy" phrases and words that convey no meaning or content. Are we to take seriously the "credentials" of "authors" who describe a part of the Google Analytics site as "itchy glitchy," for example?

I bought this book hoping I would obtain insights in to how to improve my company's use of Google Analytics. Instead, I feel I wasted 30 US Dollars on a book that should, in my opinion, been either stripped of the unnecessary "cuteness" or more properly marketed as a book for people who want their intellgence insulted. There are other resources (some, free, on the web) for people wanting to learn how to improve their use of Google Analytics. Save yourself some money and avoid having your intellect insulted by not buying this book!

New technologies like Google Analytics change so fast. I purchased the third edition of this book from among a group of three or four books on this subject because it was the newest release. A second consideration, for me, was that I wanted a book specific to Google Analytics rather than a book focused on the larger subject of Web analytics. I wanted a book that would point me at the important features of this tool without reading an extra 300 pages of analytics theory.

This book delivers as a quick start guide and reference to Google Analytics, but it also has some minor flawed. The coverage of advanced applications of Google Analytics is good. It presents clear examples of how to use all the features of Analytics, and puts all those features in a larger context. The book is both a blueprint for setting up your site analytics, and a reference you can revisit later. That larger context of how to set up your first analytics program is what makes this book worth buying. There are plenty of topics on the Web about using Google Analytics, but you don't get a good guide to the big picture of how to set up your analytics program from a bunch of disparate topics scattered around the Internet.

This new edition has some flaws. Especially in the first third of the book, some topics aren't very well written. For example, in the introductory section of the book, where they compare Google Analytics to log file analyzers, some of what is said seems to be wrong, and the information on setting up your tracking code is a bit outdated. Minor problems but worse than what I would expect in a published book.

Bottom line, it serves the purpose of an introduction and guide to Google Analytics. I'm using it.