ClickEquations Blog
A Weblog on Paid Search Marketing, Search Analytics, and Online Marketing
Has Web Analytics Jumped The Shark?
One morning in San Francisco last week, the happy-time morning folks on one of the TV networks interviewed the whole original cast of Happy Days. Howard Cunningham, Ralph Malph, Fonzie – all of them who aren’t now as rich as Ron Howard.
One question the penetrating journalist just had to ask was about the phrase ‘jumping the shark’. Fonzie and Gary Marshall were quick to point out that the show was #1 for two years after that episode.
I guess they wanted to make it clear that they don’t even understand what ‘jumping the shark‘ means.
But later that day, after the 2nd day of the XChange analytics conference, where many of the WA Gurus and a lot of very prominent Analytics customers gathered to discuss their marketplace, it hit me:
I think high end of web analytics might have jumped the shark too. The money may flow for a while longer, but there are some real problems which may be irreparable.
What I Heard At XChange
With a unique conference format – all sessions except for a brief opening event are round-table discussions between 10-20 attendees – XChange is the perfect place to find out what’s really happening. Everybody gets their say, not just a few selected presenters.
And what they’re clearly expressing is frustration. The world’s most prominent web analytics thinkers and professionals seem to have five issues:
- Data Collection - Analytics can only work if the right data is collected. Yet site tagging is hugely problematic because IT depts are slow and inflexible. Managing web analytics in this environment is like driving a race car where use of the gas and breaks requires a ‘request submission form’ that someone else will consider and implement, fully or partially, at some time of their choosing. You slam into a lot of walls this way. Of course, if you do get the site tagged, the circus that is cookies pretty much obliterates the data integrity anyway. Saying it’s the trends not the numbers only goes so far.
- Data Integration - Even if website-based tracking was perfect, the world is no longer website based. From social media to multi-channel to Flash, Flex, Ajax, Video, and Mobile, web analytics is a guard dog with a 10 mile territory and a 100-ft chain tied around its’ neck. That’s a lot of ground not covered.
- Core Capabilities - Supposed you had all the data you dream of – then you could analyze it as you wished right? Maybe not. There were no ‘I Love My Vendor’ buttons at this show – in fact the session on ‘When and How to Change Vendors’ confirmed only that the top analytics vendors have a lot in common with the airlines – everybody hates the one they use the most. The most common story was of executives wanting the cool reports and features they understood to be promised in the sales demos, and the analytics professionals having a hard time explaining why that was completely impossible.
- Competitive Environment - The party line at XChange was a professed distain for Google Analytics because it’s ‘limited and inflexible’, but they aren’t pleased with the growing lack of alternatives at the high end. Several still going concerns are assumed to be the walking dead, and the remaining green giant has a surprising lack of goodwill that would lead you to believe Microsoft had already bought them.
- Damn Customers - This is where the real trouble lies. Because of the issues listed above, analytics folks haven’t been able to educate or satisfy their customers – the managers, marketers, partners, and technical staff that need to consume the information and insights web analytics are supposed to produce. The stories clearly reveal users who want things they can’t have, don’t understand the things they get, ask for things they don’t need, don’t use the things they’re given, and remain therefore un-enlightened as to the behaviour and performance of their online assets. This is making it very hard for the analysts to tell them that what they really need is more time, more staff, and more money for new tools.
Is there success and satisfaction out there? Yes.
The most advanced of the practitioners are doing wonderful things. The smartest of them have generated huge wins from the tools they have. There are anticdotes aplenty. It’s not impossible.
But it’s not easy. Even those with clear wins aren’t living on easy street. Those without them seem nearly defeated. The barriors are just too high and too hard. The few wins are not worth the enormous costs.
It seems like high end Web Analytics is the new CRM, where companies used to spend hundreds of thousand, or even millions of dollars, only to find their sales staff secretly using ASK on their laptops.
What I Think It Means
And that’s the thought that got me. The high-end packages can out-perform Google Analytics in just about every way you can think of or discuss, except in the ease with which basic data and analysis is delivered.
Which leads to a paradox; the high end package can out perform Google Analytics only if they can be fully and properly configured, solve some very serious data integration problems, actually do most or all of what they promise, and become accessible to a very diverse set of end clients. But they’re failing at these four tasks which leaves most end-users getting only very simple reporting out of very complicated and expensive packages.
Wouldn’t they be better off just getting these simple reports from a simple and cheap (even free) package?
PostScript
I wish it weren’t true. I want the full promise of the high end. And it takes a lot to convince me that something possible is impractical.
But if the collective status of the smartest and best resourced analytics users is as it appeared at XChange, I think I just saw The Fonz water skiing in a leather jacket.
Clarity II – Questions About The Queries?
In the earlier posts in this series the point was made that it’s hard to get clear and complete information on the performance of PPC accounts.
This is true, in part, because some important information is either unavailable or plays hard-to-get. Examples mentioned included search queries, information about missing clicks, and results in terms of true profitability.
This post drills down on search queries; the others will be covered in future posts.
Finding Queries
Let’s start with an assertion: It is not possible or reasonable to competently manage paid search campaigns without full access to search query details.
This isn’t a nice-to-have. It’s required.
Managing without query details is like managing a baseball team without being allowed to know what happened at the plate. Suppose you’re told who gets on base and who doesn’t, but nothing else.
How do you rate or make changes to your batting lineup without knowing who strikes out, who hits deep long fly balls miraculously caught on the warning track, or who gets hit by pitches?
The analogy may not be perfect, but the point is that choosing to add, delete, change bids, add negatives, not add negatives, or modify match type without knowing queries is a bit of blind-folded juggling.
And yet, most people do manage paid search without full and detailed query reports – they have to because the data is not available to them. With very limited exceptions, you can’t get it from the engines, in web analytics software, or even in specialized paid search management tools.
Why Search Queries Matter (the short version)
Queries are vital because they can contain insight into the desire or intent of the user. If you sell tennis racquets, for example, and buy the keyword ‘tennis racquet’ (using the standard Broad Match) then your ad might be shown to someone who wants ‘tennis racquet restringing’, or ‘New Prince V14 Tennis Racquet’ or ‘used cheap tennis racquet’ or even someone looking for ‘tennis racquet art’.
Are each of those people relevant to you? Are the ones that are relevant equally relevant? Can you write a single text ad that speaks directly to each of those people and persuades them to click and take action?
If you know the search queries that people clicked on when triggered by the keywords you’re buying, you can answer these questions and take action to improve the targeting and results of your account.
Without knowing, you’re left without the ability to fine tune your campaign, so you waste money and miss revenue opportunities.
Where The Queries Are(n’t)
When talking about this, I’ve found that people usually have either never thought much about the difference between queries and keywords, or have the impression that they do have access to that information but don’t use it aggressively so they haven’t realized the limitations in the little bit of query data they can access.
Let’s review what search query data is available in some of the most widely used SEM analytics and reporting tools:
- In Google Adwords the Search Queries report lists queries at the ad-group level, but it does not tell you which keywords triggered which queries. And they notoriously hide a massive percentage of them in rows marked ‘Other Keywords’.
- In Google Analytics does not display search queries at all, at least by default. It can be hacked to display queries, but from what I can see in the ones I’ve used you cannot see/link the queries to specific keywords (or even bucket them into adgroups).
- In Omniture SiteCatalyst & SearchCenter offer great query support if you purchase the optional ‘db universal’ VISTA rule (typically $5K). With this enabled you gain fairly complete search query reporting and it’s a metric you can use with the full power of SiteCatalyst reporting, meaning you can use the ‘break down by’ feature to subsort by query relating it to keyword, product sold, or just about anything. You can also access it via their Excel tool in powerful ways.
- In most stand-alone paid search management tools (like Clickable, Acquisio, SearchRev, SearchIgnite, Efficient Frontier, and others), search queries do not exist. They’re completely unavailable. These tools rely on the search engine API’s for data – they don’t have their own page/URL tags – so they just can’t get query data. Which means their customers don’t get it either.
There are many other analytics and paid search tools of course, and I don’t personally know the details of many of them. (I believe Marin Software does have their own tags and can gather query data, but I don’t recall the level of reporting, for example.)
If you know the details of available or unavailable query information and reporting, please leave details in the comments.
Missing Data 1, Good Search Reporting 0
Based on this review of the popular platforms people use for paid search reporting, it seems safe to say that the vast majority – probably at least 90% and maybe as many as 98% of search managers do not have the ability to look at which queries drove clicks (and spent their money) on a keyword by keyword basis.
Imagine if your sales records only told you what categories of items you sold, not which specific items or SKU’s were sold. How would you decide on inventory re-orders or future promotional plans. You couldn’t with any level of accuracy so you’d have to just guess and play the averages.
This is what the search engines want you to do. Your inefficiency is their profit margin.
It’s hard to understand why the web analytics and focused paid search software companies place such a low priority on this vital information. I have some theories, which I’ll share in future posts.
A Fair Shot
If it’s the search query/keyword combination that triggers ads, causes your money to be spent, and dramatically clarifies the ‘why’ of who clicked and converted, why should paid search advertisers have to manage their accounts without this information?
I suggest you ask your search engine account managers, or analytics / PPC tool providers that question.
Facebook
Twitter
YouTube
Blog
Comment or Question? Leave It Here!