A Google Analytics vs. NetTracker Comparison
January 21st, 2006 -
I have been using Google Analytics lately. In the past I have used NetTracker extensively and evaluated other products such as WebTrends and ClickTracks I like some of the Google features, clean user interface and integration with AdWords. But I yearn for the flexibility and power of NetTracker.
What Google Analytics has going for it:
- It’s free!
- Integration with AdWords
- Good set of standard reports
- Easily isolates Paid vs Unpaid Search Traffic
- Good keyword reports - tied to conversion
- Provided as an online service - so no server logs to worry about.
- Pretty
What NetTracker has going for it:
- Incredible drilldown capability. You can drill into every individual visit and every individual click stream. I mentioned in a previous post to never trust your analytics. With NetTracker you drill down into the details and look for patterns of strange visitation data. I can’t tell you how often this ability helped me solve mysteries in visit data.
- The ability to filter any data by a huge variety of variables on on the fly or in a custom report. For instance, I could produce a report for all visitors who reached a page that:
- URL matched a particular pattern
- Referred to from a particular engine
- With a partial match on dynamic parameter
- Entry page matched a particular pattern
This level of detail allows me to segment and aggregate all different types of visits.
Google Analytics weaknesses:
- It has limited drilldown capability. You just have to accept the information it gives you on faith.
- You don’t own the data Google does (there are those who find this disturbing).
- No custom reports.
NetTracker Weaknesses:
- You need to pay to get the features that you need (there is a free version but it is a bit too lite!)
- UI is so 1995.
- Lacks integrations with AdWords.
- A Bit slow due to all data it aggregates
And neither or these products has a nice graphical view of click behavior like Clicktracks which overlays click stats right on top of an image of your Web pages.
Really - I’d like to integrate my favorite features of Clicktracks, Google Analytics and NetTracker into one. It could be Omniture fits that description …I need a closer look at Omniture!!