Does Google Analytics Impact Your Rankings or SEO?
There’s plenty of discussion regarding this issue on SEO forums on the internet and has been for quite a long time. Google Analytics is without a doubt an excellent tool that comes with many features and provides fantastic value for any marketer. It is, however, it has some negatives There’s always the possibility that it can affect the rankings of your website. Let’s take a look at the arguments and consider what the potential implications are on the table, shall we? – Analytics Affect Rankings Seo
What I’ve done in the following paragraphs is present the claims, all of which I’ve read in one way or another on the internet and in a simple to comprehend sentence. Following the claim I’ve deconstructed the claim to discover how it could or might not be accurate. It’s up to you to decide whether to accept my word I’ll just saythat I think you ought to. Why do I need to tell you something I didn’t? – Analytics Affect Rankings Seo
Here are some assertions (and the myths) concerning Google Analytics.
1. Google is a big fan of users that have installed Google Analytics
It isn’t based on reality, but it is an interesting conspiracy between the nuts there. They believe that Google is strong enough to provide special treatment to people who utilize their software. There are a lot of people making similar assertions regarding the other Google services. “If you’re using Google AdSense, your ranking will increase.” “If your site is using an Gmail account that’s linked to your website for Google Drive, Google might boost your website’s ranking.” “Using YouTube, an official Google company, can improve the search engine rankings of your site.” – Analytics Affect Rankings Seo
The truth is that everything is just speculation. There has never been any evidence to suggest that the use of Google Analytics without the addition of any other factors influencing it improves its rankings. It’s simple enough to test, and even. Anyone with a low number of users or traffic figures is able to install or deinstall Google Analytics, as the situation requires. – Analytics Affect Rankings Seo
Don’t do anything else, don’t reduce or stop advertising or make any changes to the production of content or link hunting, and don’t alter your site’s content whatsoever. Give it for a week or two and then look at your ranking. Did they change, either upwards or downwards? I’m guessing that no, they shouldn’t have moved in any way. It’s not much more than the usual variations over the same time could create. – Analytics Affect Rankings Seo
There’s also an antitrust concern in this. If Google would use its huge search footprint to favorably reward users of its own software, it could result in an uncontrolled feedback loop. It is usually in violation of certain laws governing competition as well, and even though Google could be large enough to be able to do any kind of thing however there is no reason they should prefer to do so. They gain more respect as they attract more committed customers, and they become more efficient as a business by delivering a superior product and letting people know the quality of it. – Analytics Affect Rankings Seo
2. Google Analytics slows down your website and can hurt rankings
Google Analytics is a script and scripts require an amount of time for loading and running. Whatever the optimization of your script may be, it’s going to take more time to load and run than not having a script in the first place. – Analytics Affect Rankings Seo
Google utilizes page load time as a indexing aspect. This has been an established fact since 2010 and you can learn more regarding in their initial declaration on Google Blog. The concept for this announcement is that it will encourage speeds up websites for slower users and, obviously generally improving the overall user experience more enjoyable. – Analytics Affect Rankings Seo
Because a greater percentage of users browse using a phones, this saves on mobile data usage, which reduces loading times for mobiles and makes browsing on mobile easy. Of course, in the year 2010, Google was not as keen on creating great mobile experiences However, it was likely in their plans.
It is logical, it follows it is likely that Google Analytics will slow down a website. That slow down is recorded by Google’s crawlers and users, and could result in a lower rankings due to it. Furthermore, users may increase bounce rates because of the slower loading speed and the increased bounce rate could further harm the rankings of your site. – Analytics Affect Rankings Seo
Two arguments can be made to this assertion. The first argument is the fact that Google Analytics is a very small script and the effect on load times is so small as to be barely visible. The second reason is that, since 2010 Google has been using Asynchronous loading JavaScript for the Analytics code. It is specifically waiting for the time to unload for their page load tracking program which means it can’t be counted against any website. – Analytics Affect Rankings Seo
To directly quote straight directly from Matt Cutts and a Google video:
“The answer is”no. Webspam does not utilize Google Analytics as of recently I checked it out the quality of search results in general. Webspam does not utilize Google Analytics to determine ranking. This means that if you make use of Google Analytics but you should not make use of Google Analytics and it will not impact your rank within Google results. – Analytics Affect Rankings Seo
Let’s cover for those who are extremely curious, a small aspect to consider is what happens if my website was extremely slow and the addition of Google Analytics just barely tipped my site over the edge so that my page or site appeared to be when it was loading extremely slowly. – Analytics Affect Rankings Seo
The solution to that is equally good. Google Analytics has recently introduced new Asynchronous JavaScript software that could implement, which you can then add to your site and it will then wait to load the JavaScript when the toolbar is unloaded event. If you’re worried about the possibility that Google Analytics might slow my website a slightly, they’re actually in the forefront of having javascript that is good and doesn’t impact the load time of users, it won’t alter your search engine results.” – Analytics Affect Rankings Seo
Matt Cutts, “Will the use of Google Analytics affect my ranking negatively? impact on my rank?”- Analytics Affect Rankings Seo
3. Google provides a slight rank boost to make up for the disadvantages of using Analytics
This is a piggyback from the earlier claim. The idea is that they are aware that their code is slowing down a website or triggers one or more disadvantage, they will combat that by giving websites a small benefits in exchange. If you earn – Analytics Affect Rankings Seo
-.01 rank for using Google Analytics They will give you +.01 ranking when you use it as a method of compensating. If you reduce the negative impact, they do not keep track of it and then modify the benefit so that you’re better than. – Analytics Affect Rankings Seo
There are some compelling arguments in favor of this also. First , it’s an ineffective solution that isn’t making sense. What’s the reason Google offer a penalty, instead of finding an option to ensure that the negative does not be a factor in your decision? This is a more precise method. – Analytics Affect Rankings Seo
In addition, as stated in the previous statement, Google did exactly that. The drawback did not directly affect users or the speed of their own sites. So there is no reason to offer a amount of compensation to sites that utilize Google Analytics. Claim busted. – Analytics Affect Rankings Seo
4. Google Analytics gives Google more details that they utilize to determine your ranking
This is sort of an esoteric claim made with tin foil. The idea is that certain sites, specifically those that employ some vaguely exploitive methods like link buying privately-owned blog network, or anything else Google does not approve of, such as affiliate marketing are likely to hide the activities they’re using from Google. They’re gaining their benefits, and trying to conceal the source of it. – Analytics Affect Rankings Seo
In this way installing Google Analytics will give Google an access point to your website, and that window would provide information on the incoming links, sources of traffic, about the site’s ownership, and other data that Google could use to attack the website. Google Analytics “catch on to you” in a way and then take steps to punish you. – Analytics Affect Rankings Seo
The most important argument that goes against this argument is that Google already collects all that information from publicly available sources. They don’t require an eye on your website to study the traffic that is coming to your sitesince they’re the ones who refer to many of the links initially. – Analytics Affect Rankings Seo
They don’t have to take a analyze your inbound links coming from Google Analytics; where do you believe Google Analytics pulls the data from? Its own index contains all that information in its database. They don’t have any access that isn’t have access to. – Analytics Affect Rankings Seo
5. Not using Google Analytics might result in a minor Google penalty
This is an intriguing one. The concept is the idea that Google is a huge player in the field, trying to be used in every shape and form by every person across the globe. It’s actually quite close, considering that services such as Gmail, Google Maps, Google search and Google Drive are in large number of users. YouTube along with other Google owned services contribute to the perception that Google is a necessity. Even if you don’t utilize them, you’ll have to make use of an anti-script blocker all the time and at all times to prevent being tracked by others who use Google Analytics. – Analytics Affect Rankings Seo
The assertion, then is that Google is actually unusual for a site to not utilize Google Analytics. They think they have the most efficient analytics software worldwide So why would anyone not make use of it? They’re concealing something!
But, again, Google can’t do this due to the fear of antitrust suits. On top of this, however they’re not widespread across the globe. In the English speaking world, it’s dominating, however other languages and cultures face a tougher time with doing it. In the end it is the case that if you’re Romanian and have an online site, you won’t wish to use Google Analytics for your site in English. There are certain languages that Google does not provide translations for.
6. Google Analytics helps Google’s crawler to find websites
This is an argument in Google’s favor, possibly. It is claimed the fact that Google Analytics has to be installed on every page on your website you’d like to track. It is then possible to install it on pages that do not have links to them or other means to be discovered. Google will be able to see monitoring data for a webpage that’s not included in its index and it can then crawl that page.
They may give you an extra rankings for the page as well as for your website in general, since this page provides you with an added benefits. However when the page contains spam that you are trying to conceal it may be penalized. However, there’s no reason to put spam on your website and conceal it, as the whole point is you’re trying to manipulate results of a search with it.
Although this has some small potential, the truth lies in the fact that google’s crawlers have already done an excellent job. They don’t need to pull information from Analytics to discover your web pages. In the ideal scenario, they’re looking at the internal links of your website as well as the RSS feeds, as well as even your sitemap.
If you’re genuinely lacking anything linking to a webpage and there’s no way to allow it to be accessible outside via a direct link the value you gain from the page will be negated by the absence of proper SEO methods that keep it from being visible.
7. Google Analytics provides marketers valuable data that helps them improve their rankings on their websites.
This is the last assertion and, honestly, it’s the only one that’s true. The idea is that Google Analytics is, well an analytics software. It’s designed to provide you with details and information about your web traffic and hyperlinks. It offers you data that is more than any impact on your results.
It’s not about the tool you’re using and the way you use it. If you use the information it provides and apply changes to your website and improve your ranking in search results. It is possible to make better and more precise changes using Google Analytics data on hand than you could without it.
It applies to any analytics software but not only Google Analytics, but it is the case. Being able to act on information and acting upon it can give you an edge over those who don’t have that data to make decisions based on.
