How Much Does Google Know About Me and You?
How much does Google know about me and you? I think it’s pretty safe to say that Google probably knows more about us than most of your closest friends and family members do and certainly more than any other website on the Internet. Obviously, Google stores its search engine query history in their massive data warehouses for up to 18 months. So while you may have never told another soul, Google doesn’t forget about that mysterious ailment that you were searching for “how to cure embarrassing rash” a year and a half ago. They can easily tie a specific user to a specific query with cookies and/or IP addresses.
And if you think you are out of the clear because you don’t use Google as your primary search engine, chances are that Google still knows pretty much everything about you because you most likely have used these services or come across websites that use these services and thus enables Google to track your activity:
- GMail - As of December 2009, Gmail had 179 Million users log into their site at least once monthly. Even if you don’t use Gmail, I’m willing to bet that you have emailed somebody who does. And thus, your conversation is tracked by Google.
- Google Analytics - By far the most popular website analytics service on the Internet. In fact, I just wrote a separate post about how many websites use Google Analytics about this. It is estimated that Google Analytics tracks 80.4% of websites on the Internet. So unless you only visit the same 20% of the Internet, you can count on the fact that Google Analytics has tracked your usage across several different websites.
- YouTube - Already the world’s second most popular search engine, YouTube is the premier destination for the red hot online video market. In fact, YouTube said they serve OVER 2 BILLION video views each and every day. That is insane!
- Google Maps - It is reported that Google Maps gets 55 Million unique visitors each month in the United States, which is significantly higher than MapQuest’s 38 Million unique visitors.
- Google AdSense - I can’t seem to find any statistics on exactly how many websites use AdSense to monetize their sites, but I think it’s safe to say that if it isn’t the most widely used website advertising network, then it is definitely in the Top 3. Anytime you view a website with Google AdSense and/or banner ads displayed by DoubleClick, you are being tracked by Google.
- Google Chrome - Google Chrome is already the third most popular web browser, behind only Internet Explorer and Mozilla Firefox, with its 7.16% marketshare of the worldwide Internet usage.
- Google Docs - More and more users are moving from desktop software such as Microsoft Office to using cloud-based document software, and Google Docs is the most widely used in this market.
- Google Android - Google’s mobile OS has already taken over the top spot from Apple’s iPhone. And as more and more Android-enabled cell phones continue to flood the market, the more popular Google’s mobile OS will be.
- Google Toolbar, Google Earth, Google AdWords, Blogger, Picasa, and on and on and on…
Basically Google dominates the Internet and most likely your online life as well. And since Google is tracking your online activity, keep in mind that anything you search for or visits to any websites can potentially one day be made public!
How Many Websites Use Google Analytics?
How many websites use Google Analytics? As the most popular website traffic statistics software used on the Internet, it is estimated that 57% of the Top 10,000 websites and just under 50% of the Top 1,000,000 websites use Google Analytics. So, it’s safe to say that at least 500,000 websites and most likely A LOT more use Google Analytics to track their website traffic.
And how does Google Analytics compare to other website analytics services? Well according to W3Techs, 80.4% of all websites that use website analytics use Google Analytics. The second most popular traffic analysis tool is LiveInternet, with a measly 5.4%, and then StatCounter coming in at third with 4.6%. And perhaps my favorite website analytics tool, Clicky, only registers at 0.9%! Although these other services may only have 5% of the market, that still translates to tens of thousands of websites that they track.
And even though Google Analytics dominates the website analytics market, it still has its limitations and doesn’t necessarily mean that it is the best. I think analytics programs such as Clicky, which offers real-time tracking in a slick looking interface, along with other new startups will gradually chip away at the Google Analytics marketshare, especially as more and more people start to become wary of using Google services for literally everything they do online (which is the topic of my next blog post!).
So there you go, Google Analytics is by far the most popular and widely used website analytics tool on the Internet. What do you guys think? And do you use any other analytics services that I should be aware of?
Google Analytics IP Address Tracking Script with PHP
Google Analytics is by far the most widely used web analytics software, free or enterprise level, but it has several downsides, including lack of IP address tracking. You are able to drill down to the Service Provider names but that does not provide enough detailed data, especially if there are several users that use the same ISP but are in no other way related to each other, which can be a problem when analyzing traffic data.
Google Analytics obviously uses IP address tracking in their system but they choose not to reveal that data to its users for privacy reasons. This really does not make much sense to me since nearly every other web analytics tool allows you to track IP addresses. But luckily there may be a way around that by adding custom tracking variables with PHP (although it may be against Google Analytics TOS, which I am not really sure what will happen if you break the TOS).
So, here is how you can do track IP addresses in Google Analytics with this PHP and JavaScript script:
“javascript:__utmSetVar(’php echo IP address function’)”>
Now you will be able to look up IP addresses in the User Defined field of the Visitors tab in the Google Analytics dashboard.
Magento Google Analytics Funnel for Tracking Each Step of One Page Checkout
Magento Google Analytics - I have spent the entire afternoon working on a client’s Magento website. As an update to my previous post “Magento One Page Checkout vs. Multipage Checkout“, I needed to set up a Google Analytics funnel to accurately track each step of the One Page Checkout process. Because it obviously only uses one page and AJAX, the default Google Analytics configuration is not able to track each of the six steps of the checkout process to determine where the visitors are abandoning their transactions. Clearly, it is very valuable to have that information available. Luckily for us, we are able to do just that. Here are the steps:
1. Open up the template file /app/design/frontend/default/YOURTEMPLATENAME/template/checkout/onepage.phtml in a text editor or WYSIWYG web editor such as Dreamweaver.
2. Paste the following code to the very bottom of the onepage.phtml file (You may have to replace the quotes in plaintext for it to work, fyi):
<script type=”text/javascript”>
Checkout.prototype.gotoSection = function(section) {
try {
pageTracker._trackPageview(’<?php echo $this->getUrl(’checkout/onepage’) ?>’ + section + ‘/’);
} catch(err) { }
section = $(’opc-’+section);
section.addClassName(’allow’);
this.accordion.openSection(section);
};
</script>
3. Save and upload the template file and you are done with the hard part and you will now be able to track the views of each of the six steps!
4. Now if you want to set up the Google Analytics conversion tracking and funnel to determine where the users are dropping off, you can do so by creating a new Goal in Google Analytics and by using the following settings:
Goal Type: URL Destination
Match Type: Head Match
Goal URL: /checkout/onepage/success/
Funnel Steps:
Step 1: /checkout/onepage/
Step 2: /checkout/onepage/billing/
Step 3: /checkout/onepage/shipping/
Step 4: /checkout/onepage/shipping_method/
Step 5: /checkout/onepage/payment/
Step 6: /checkout/onepage/review/
And that’s it!