Web Analytics

Web Analytics are used to study the behaviors of web users. The purpose of such analytics is to find out what works and what does not when it comes to consumers and the buisness aspect of the site. For example, what banners get the most clicks, what landing page gets the most sells, and what sites get the most traffic from various target audiences. This information allows websites and advertising agencies to improve upon their campaigns to make them as effective as possible. Web Analytics are offered by many different service providers, which makes this form of research very easy to access and use. Web Analytics technology assigns a cookie to every visitor of a particular site. This cookie allows a visitor to be tracked and identified the next time they visit. The information gathered by the cookie is then used for web analytics. In other words, web analytics works to inform advertiser's of what people are doing, what they want, and where they want it. In my opinion, web analytics is a gift to the buisness world because it creates a specific consumer audience, which can be specifically targeted and making people easier to sell to and thus increase sales. cha -ching.
A good example of a web analytics server is http://www.google.com/analytics/ . Anyone can sign up for free and have their website be tracked by google analytics. The information gathered includes: visits, pageviews, pages/visit, bounce rates, Average time on site, % of new visits, visitors, a map of where visitors are from, traffic sources, etc. This information is invaluable because it allows the owner of the site to have a good idea of who is visiting which allows the site to be tailored to the viewing audience and also expanded to inlcude a larger audience. Gaining direct feedback about the popularity of a website nation or world wide encourages advertisers and website owners to improve upon what they have already created and make it the best. I think that being able to find out if the goal I set out to achieve is being reached is a priviledge and finding out ways to improve if I haven't achieved my goal is even better. If I were a professional blogger I would definitely use web analytics to my advantage, especially the map, % of new visitors, and average time spent. The map option would allow me to know what geographic regions have the most concentrated viewers and I can gear my blog more towards specific people's cultures, lifestyles, and interests. Also, knowing how many new visitiors I am reaching would help me to see what I am doing that is drawing in new people and to see if perhaps I can expand on those ideas. The Average time spent on site would also be of great importance to my knowledge of my website audience because I can then aim for presenting my information in a way that can be viewed in a specific amount of time and figure out ways to lengthen the average time with more interesting and attention grabbing material. Overall, being able to really kow who is visiting your website and viewing your ads is extremely beneficial and google analytics is definitely a good source for that information.
Unfortunately, there is a limit to how accurtate web analytics can be especially when it comes to paying the bills for advertising on specific sites. Often, the amount of money to be paid for an ad on a site is determined by the number of clicks which leads to innacurate costs being projected. The reason for this inaccuracy is click fraud. Click Fraud happens when a big company, such as google, places an ad on a smaller less active website that basically only holds advertisements. The owners of the smaller websites gain profit from the larger company for placing this ad. And so, the smaller website owners will hire a large amount of people to click on these ads even though they are not interested consumers or even from within the country a service or product is being offered. The end result of this false clicking activity is that the smaller website is making money from the big website, the big website is making money from the advertisers, and the advertisers are losing money as well as being falsely informed that they're consumer market is bigger than it really is. And so, in click fraud scenarios advertisers basically get screwed. There are measures to be taken to prevent click fraud from happening(look on this site for tips on avoiding click fraud:http://www.web1marketing.com/blog/index.php/archives/tips-for-preventing-click-fraud/ ). However, click fraud can be very hard to detect before it is too late. In my opinion, the amount of clicks should no longer be releveant and impressions should definitely always be the factor that deals with how much a ad company pays. On the other hand, would click fraud simply turn into impression fraud? The FBI is looking into the situation, and I am curious to see what kind of interent security develops within the next ten years. Click Fraud and any other kind of schemes run on the internet are very dangerous because as up and coming in technology as people are, there are many who are unaware of the dangers we make ourselve vulnerable to unknowingly. I think that eventually we will be able to get rid of click fraud all together, but then what is to come? With everything from stocks, banking, car buying, trip planning, all kinds of shopping, and so much more happening online, should we be more frightened of allowing our money and perosonal information to be completely scammed out of our hands?