GoingUp vs Google Analytics - Which one is better?

(4 posts) (3 voices)

Started 1 year ago by Bella Monaco
Latest reply from Andrew Mandelson

Tags:

Bella Monaco
Member

After reading Jerome's post, I have decided to compare between GoingUp and Google Analytics. There are both SaaS web analytics products, and probably many of you are using Google Analytics on your blogs and websites.

First of all, for those who are comparing between those two web stats SaaS solutions, we need to clarify few things. Google Analytics can be integrated with Google Adwords and GoingUp can't. This is a huge advantage for Adwords advertisers, who want to cross-link the data collected from their on going Google Adwords campaigns, together with their current web analytics data.

Free SEO Web Analytics

But what GoingUp! can offer that Google Analytics cannot? - SEO features. The best and most valuable feature in GoingUp! is its ability to monitor and track keywords positioning. That's something that you want find anywhere else. So why use keywords tracking anyways?

Keywords trackign allows you to track your keywords positioning in Google SERPs.

You can identify keywords that leads to more goals/conversions and continue your SEO efforts, by targeting those keywords instead of those that are not performing very well (less conversions). Another great thing about GoingUp! web analytics & SEO, is its dashboard. You can customized your dashboard in many ways, and everything works using AJAX, NO refreshing!

As Google Analytics, GoingUp is also a FREE web analytics product.

All you have to do is register and you can track all you websites for FREE!. The interface is top-notch and you will fill right at home if you used Google Analytics before. You get complete website stats, track keywords positions, define actions & goals. Other features include: traffic trend analysis, referring keywords, heat maps (for FREE!), inbound link monitoring, Google Page Rank tracking, Alexa Rank Tracking, Keywords density tool and much more.

You can see that GoingUp! has some unique features that you can find on any other Free Web Analytics software.

I don't know if being a member in organization like "Web Analytics Association" helps, but its in there. A proud member of WAA. This is a trust worthy company, with many users from all across the world, using its solution. PageRank, Alexa and Keywords monitoring, what more can you ask.

On GoingUp! official home page, you can even find some free tools that will help you optimize your website performance on the web: Site Analyzer, which checks you website structure, social links and other metrics and reports you when something is not ok. SEO Optimizer, which scans your site and help you optimize your website for better website positioning in search engines. Tag Cloud, Link & Site diagnosis, Bulk Domain analyzer and more.

Google Analytics vs. GoingUp! - What do you think?, Which one is better?

Related links:

Google Analytics and GoingUp!

Posted 1 year ago #
Idan
Key Master

I think that in order to compare between Google Analytics and GoingUp, you need to understand for which market segment those SaaS solutions are targeted for. I think that these are too different products, not buy their main purposes, but for the business segment that they both market their products for. Let me be more precise.

Google Analytics is the most popular SaaS web analytics solution to date. It targets everyone, from the small blogger, up to big corporations websites. You can read Forrester's "Appraising You Investment in Enterprise Web Analytics". Of course there are reasons why large corporations wouldn't use Google Analytics, that one of the reasons is data confidentiality.

Some large corporations will probably prefer implementing hosted solutions, where the data itself is kept within the companies boundaries, under their firewall and on their servers. So they can see quite, knowing that the data can only be seen by their employees that have the right permission to access that valuable data.

The most popular Enterprise web analytics solutions for large companies are: Coremetrics, Webrends and Omniture. All allow flexible web stats solutions, that incorporates self-hosted database, where all the data is stored on private clouds or private servers. So the best thing to do is read Google Privacy Policy before deciding.

The policy talks about Information Security, Data Integrity, collected information, etc. Information security is all about protecting the data from unauthorized access, use, disclosure, disruption, modification or destruction (via Wikipedia). And I surely believe that Google does that best it can to protect their customer's data. But their are two questions that you should ask yourself:

1. Does a company which offer SaaS Web Analytics solution will take responsibility if such security breach occurs?

2. Does a company which offer SaaS Web Analytics solutions will keep the information totally private, even from its employees?

Some organization and large corporations, just don't want to get to that point. And therefore, there is a place for competitors in the Enterprise Web Analytics segment, and that's the reason why companies like Omniture and WebTrends exists. Furthermore, companies like WebTrends, give a full web data analysis services, including professional web analytics consulting services, which are given as part of their service agreement.

I am going pretty long here, but hang on.

GoingUp! is a niche product in the large market of SaaS Web Analytics products. It exists because it offers several features that its competitors don't have, like tracking keywords positioning. There are many SEO savvy that know and understand the importance of organic search results and search engine optimization strategies, in order to succeed in such competitive market. Google probably has its own reasons why it didn't offer such feature at the first place. They even altered the specific API that gave programmers the option to get a specific position of a keywords/phrase in Google SERPs (as far as I remember).

Furthermore, GoingUp! offers an integrated Heat-Map solution, segmentation, action & goals features, and all of that for free. There are many reasons why small companies, blogger and other site owners, will choose this product over Google Analytics, just because of those specific and unique features. The became very popular, and they directly compete against Woopra and Clicky. In order to succeed, you need to offer something that your competitors don't have.

GoingUp did it just the righy way.

So as you can see, there are similarities, but there are differences that really make them a unique product. Furthermore, Google gives any Adwords advertiser, the option to integrate its Adword account, together with Google Analytics, and further understand and improve his marketing strategies. The ability to integrate AdWords and Google Analytics is something that you just can't put aside, especially if you are an Adwords advertiser. Other web stats solutions use Google Adwords API, but as you know, Google will probably not provide all the possibilities in there (I think).

This is only the tip of the ice. I enjoy using Google Analytics, and there are many features that I didn't even get a chance to use yet. Of course I am trying other solutions, but I find myself spending most of my time on Google Analytics then on any other product. But again. I think that the best thing to do is to try them out, especially if we are talking about free web statistics products.

Have a great day,

Idan.

Posted 1 year ago #
Bella Monaco
Member

Geeezzz! Idan, you wrote a book, but many thanks for the quick recommendation. I have to agree here. I have been asking the same question on different forums and got around the same answer. I have searched more information about GoingUp! and others, and I have found that most of them kicked up at around 2009. GetClicky, Woopra and GoingUp! were getting a lot of traffic at the beginning of 2009. By 2010, all those I've mentioned, jut burst in popularity. I think it means that the year 2010 and 2011 will be "The Years of Web Analytics" for sure.

Posted 1 year ago #
Andrew Mandelson
Member

Bella, I think that people just don't know how to take advantage of Google Analytics, and that's the reason why they search for other solutions, other then urchin web analytics. Being able to take advantage Advanced Segments, custom reports, set Goals and make in-depth analysis of your website's traffic, can bring insights that you haven't knew before. I think that some people just need to take a Google Analytics course or watch some YouTube videos about how to take advantage of Google Analytics tools, instead of comparing Google Analytics vs. other products with gimmicky features.

I've read some book about Google Analytics and even consult with a professional web analytics consultant, in order to better understand the changes I needed to to on my personal blog and my E-commerce website. Of course one thing that GA is missing, is a real-time reporting. The Top picks for real-time (live) web stats software are Woopra, Clicky/Getclicky and there are few more. I don't know why Google doesn't go Web Analytics 2.0. There is probably a reason for that though.

You don't have to get a Degree to understand how to use GA. I recommend buying "Google Analytics for Dummies" book, which will give you insight of all the important features that GA has to offer.
Furthermore, I also use free web analytics tools that help me get better insight, some free tools that you can find on any software. But when I've heard that GoingUp! has Keywords position tracking, I was really surprised. But the fact that I had to install the PHP code on my servers let me down.

I am staying with GA.

Andrew M. Signing out.

Posted 1 year ago #

Reply

You must log in to post.

GoingUp vs Google Analytics - Which one is better?

Free SEO Web Analytics

Reply