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Can google analytics hurt ranking

by ThomasTe
18 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Hi,

I get some different signals here. Some say that they have seen their sites drop down the rankings after having added google analytics. Others recommend that you install it.

To do, or not to do?

Best regards,
Thomas
#analytics #google #hurt #ranking
  • Profile picture of the author Lorens
    From my experience, google analytics does not affect your rankings. All my websites use it.
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  • Profile picture of the author 2d0k
    Why would it affect negatively your website's ranking? Analytics is one of Google's programs, as simple as that..
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    • Profile picture of the author Snappinn
      Originally Posted by 2d0k View Post

      Why would it affect negatively your website's ranking? Analytics is one of Google's programs, as simple as that..

      I agree, how and why should Google analytics hurt peoples websites,
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  • Profile picture of the author Jamian
    Google Analytics will not hurt your site ranking, in fact it'll help you to improve your business.
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  • Profile picture of the author InternetMarketingIQ
    I use it on nearly all my sites. Sure you give google information in exchange for "free".

    But I have come across ZERO EVIDENCE that suggests it is harming anyone's ranking.

    Clearly that would be bad for Google and Google isn't really the kind of company that likes to bite itself.
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  • Profile picture of the author W2L
    Here is the thing.. .if your operation is completely white hat then you have nothing to be afraid of Analytics will NOT hurt your rankings at all..... however if your hat is a lil ... uhh shall we say "stained" then using analytics would be like handing your entire gameplan to Google.... not like they wouldn't be able to find that out anyway....
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    • Profile picture of the author dhex
      Originally Posted by W2L View Post

      Here is the thing.. .if your operation is completely white hat then you have nothing to be afraid of Analytics will NOT hurt your rankings at all..... however if your hat is a lil ... uhh shall we say "stained" then using analytics would be like handing your entire gameplan to Google.... not like they wouldn't be able to find that out anyway....
      Wise one! but if they want to track you down, I hope you know that its possible even if you are not using analytic. Analytic makes it relatively easy for Google search quality engineers to track you down (that also is a speculation. I don't think a big company like Google will do such a privacy breach without mentioning something on their privacy policy statement).
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  • Profile picture of the author davisbrands
    The short answer is no, definitely not.
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  • Profile picture of the author recommended
    Hummm.... I'm going to have to side with the majority here; however I have heard that it does hurt your ranking by someone else. I have yet to see any results of that claim though. On the other hand, if you feel nervous about it why not test it on a couple of your websites?
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  • Profile picture of the author ThomasTe
    Thanks for all your feedback.

    I just fell over a thread from another forum, from 2007, where multiple users claimed that after having installed analytics their sites dropped in the rankings and shortly after having removed it again, they were back up.

    Have you experienced this? Do you have sites that rank well, and are also using analytics at the same time?

    I'm soon launching a business website, and would not be so happy if I started by making it harder to rank than necessary. I'm also thinking about using extremetracking.com.

    Thanks, guys.

    Best regards,
    Thomas
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  • Profile picture of the author rypher21
    no it wont hurt your site..instead its a good tool to monitor your site activity...
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  • Profile picture of the author ThomasTe
    Yeah, I think it's a great tool. I was just wondering whether there was something about the rumours.

    Well, I can see from your guys' great replies that there should be no reason why I should not install it.

    It's hereby installed.

    Thanks alot, everybody.

    Best regards,
    Thomas
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  • Profile picture of the author zoobie
    I don't think so. The reason that your friends website ranking drops may due to other reasons or Google dance. It can't be the use of Google analytics. Think about it, If it is the case, NO one will use Google analytics right?

    And Google just slaps its face with its own tool!
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  • Profile picture of the author jaratvit
    Duplicate content URLs do affect the SEO implementation But Google does not require Google Analytics to report the duplicate content problem. Google's crawler is intelligent enough to detect this problem. Google Analytics is provided for the ease and better understanding of the user. On the other hand, Google too uses the data from Analytics.
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  • Profile picture of the author Kelly Dwayne
    Greetings!

    If you speak with a Google engineer they say they don't use individual GA data as a ranking component. This makes sense because for any given search term the number of sites actually using GA will be very small indeed even zero in most cases. There will be no possibility to make a comparison if there is no data. However I am sure the data is aggregated by Google and used to learn more about user behavior in general but not for individual sites.
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  • Profile picture of the author policy
    Here's a video from Matt Cutts talking about google analytics not hurting your rankings.

    YouTube - GoogleWebmasterHelp's Channel
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