Why Google Analytics might be bad for your PageRank
Have you ever wondered why Google Analytics is free? After all Google Analytics previously known as Urchin did cost $495 per month before Google’s acquisition. That’s a huge amount! Why it costs “Zero” now?
Well there might be a lot of possible explanations but here is my version of explanation for this. Google’s PageRank is the most popular and widely accepted way of evaluating particular page’s importance on a scale from 0 - 10, where 10 is the highest. Everybody wants a higher PageRank, that’s for sure.
As for Google, it’s a very challenging job to assign every page (of every site) on internet a PageRank. Especially when Google do not know much about the traffic of a particular site. In that case, Google has to rely on external information. It can be their own Search Engine data, Alexa data, number of links pointing to particular site…etc
Magic Formula
When Google gives you its Google Analytics for free to track your stats, they are also getting a valuable info back (complete info about your site). Because now your site becomes transparent to Google. Google does not have to predict and rely on external information to determine your pages’ PageRank. It can give you the exact PageRank your every page deserves. They can track every unique visitor, every pageview, every click, entry pages, exit pages… everything!
Here is a hypothetical situation (see image below). Let’s say you didn’t know about Google Analytics and you had a PR5 site. Then you found out about GA and installed it in your site. Suddenly next PageRank update your site gets PR3! (Or it can be vice versa too, you had a PR3 then after installing it you got PR5 or 6). But I am guessing it’s the first case most of the time.
So Google Analytics is not just a free statistical tool to track your blog’s or site’s visitors, if you are looking for a simple stats tool then there are plenty of them. By using Google Analytics you are doing much more than just to track your visitors, I am sure Google uses those stats not just for their PR prediction, maybe for their search engine results too.
P.S I hope Google won’t penalize me for this article and take away my PR7 ;)
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10 Responses
to “Why Google Analytics might be bad for your PageRank”
2 Trackback(s)
- Dec 6, 2007: Google Analytics kullanma PR değerin artsın | SANALTUTKU
- Jan 10, 2008: AdesBlog.com » IzeaRank goes live, can it fight PageRank?
By Nicolas on May 2, 2007
There’s no doubt Google uses your stats to “optimize” their services, but if what you’re assuming is true the exact opposite could also be true. Maybe your site got underestimated in the first place and receives a higher rank after signing up or maybe they reward you just for using analytics … who knows.
- Hi Nicolas, yes, as I mentioned the opposite is true as well. After using GA you might have a higher PR. But as I noticed all the people who complain of lower PRs are the ones who are using GA at the moment.
By Steve on Jun 29, 2007
I agree with you on this one. I would be concerned about basically giving the search engines all of the information about your site and your conversion rates from your ads. If they don’t take the information into account for search results now, that doesn’t mean that it won’t be used in the future, after the data has been compiled!
By SEOBrien on Aug 10, 2007
Interesting headline. I’d argue Google Analytics isn’t bad for your pagerank even if it lowers it. If your theory is accurate, and I believe there is some truth to it, Analytics is good for your pagerank score regardless of it increasing or decreasing because you have assurance that it is accurate. A better headline “Google Analytics is good for your pagerank, though you may not like the results”
By Ades on Aug 11, 2007
SEOBrien, you are right on the accurate PR, but people do not necessarily want accurate PR, they want higher PR ;)
By Web Design Ireland on Aug 30, 2007
great article, but i hope they get rid of google TBPR altogether, Google Analytics can be bad for your pagerank or it can be good, theres a big debate about this situation from what i have heard
By Richard Janes on Jul 30, 2008
I’m not sure if I trust Google Analytics though! I just signed up to get figures from my server Godaddy. They report that last week I had 48,000 page views. However Analytics puts the same week at 14,000!!!!!! That’s a crazy difference and even if Godaddy isn’t filtering out search bots and spiders that still leaves a huge number that is hanging in the air. My alexa rating climbs every week - we are currently at 240,000 but I’m not really seeing a climb in analytics - but I am with the Godaddy figures.
Really strange! If they then attribute a PR rank based on analytics then I should probably get ride of analytics!!!!!!!!
Thanks for the blog!
Richard
Film Industry Bloggers
By Ades on Jul 31, 2008
Richard, I have seen a lesser traffic stats with Google Analytics too. The best way for accurate results is installing a tracking script on your server - on the same server as the site. Because there might be some data loss when a third party like google does the analytics.
By sarmstrong on Aug 29, 2008
I’m a bit late to respond to this, but I doubt that using Google Analytics would hurt pagerank. I’m certain that Google gets all sorts of useful information from Analytics. This means that Google wants to encourage people to set up Analytics on their websites.
If Google were to lower pageranks based on Analytics results, this would discourage the use of Analytics.