At first, it may seem a dumb question to ask considering that Google Analytics is one of the best ways to gain as much information about your PPC traffic as possible if it is installed onto your landing page. However, the problem that I have with this is that Google Analytics is, by no means, a perfect program and a perfect solution to gaining information about your PPC traffic. There are definitely benefits to using Google Analytics. There are also drawbacks to using the program too. For this reason, I thought it would be useful to the pay per click marketing world to understand what these pros and cons are and ultimately, should you use Google Analytics on your PPC landing page.

Pro – It Tells You EVERYTHING

The main benefit Google Analytic offers is that it can tell you just about everything you want to know about your PPC traffic. This can be seen in the two part article of Analysing Your Landing Page’s Success where I look at all the statistics Google Analytics provides you which have the potential to make you improve your campaign but understanding just exactly what each statistic means about your campaign. If you look at Google Analytics in this way, you might think that it is impossible to live without on your PPC landing page. The problem is that there are drawbacks to the program…

Con – The Statistics Are Not Accurate

It is a bold statement but unfortunately a true statement. The problem that Google Analytics has is that, forgetting what the program is used for, to install Google Analytics onto your landing page, you need to copy and past a <script> onto your landing page. This is a small segment of coding which allows Google to analyse your traffic. The problem is that ad blockers which are designed to remove the annoying pop-up adverts generally tend to block any <script> from appearing (as most types of <scripts> will be some sort of advert). Therefore, the web users that run ad blockers are not allowing Google Analytics’s <script> to record their traffic. Google Analytics is only ever showing you the traffic that isn’t running ad blockers. For some people, the difference is negligible. For others, it can be quite a large chunk of the traffic that is not being recorded by Google. The only upside I could say to this is that the traffic is more likely to not have ad blockers running if they clicked on a display advert to get to your landing page (search adverts always display with ad blockers on or off).

Con – It Can Slow Your Landing Page Load Time

Since Google Analytics is another piece of coding the web user will have to load, it means that your landing page will take longer to load (how much longer depends on how fast the internet is with the web user). With landing pages, first impressions are everything so if you are adding something which is increasing the load time of your landing page, it will no doubt increase the chances of the web user becoming frustrated and clicking away to find a faster loading website.

Ultimately, though, you have to use Google Analytics still because, although I have outlined more cons than pros, the one pro outweighs all the cons every time. You will be a fool to not use Google Analytics and take advantage of such useful free software for your PPC campaign.