Why most people don't install Google Analytics on Mini Niche Site?

Here is an interesting story for you Mike, in regards to this topic.

I have a very large education site, monetized primarily with google adsense. About a year and a half ago the site was earning around $150 per day in adsense and I was thinking about selling it to get a "lump sum" of money to invest into other projects. My plan was to sell it on Flippa, however, as many people know when listing a Flippa auction they like to verify your traffic, etc., with google analytics.

I had never installed google analytics on any of my sites before this point, simply because I really don't care how much traffic I have, all I care about are the earnings from the site.

So, I added the analytics code to my site which is in the number 2 position for its main keyword and had been for more than a year at that point. The following morning after adding analytics I woke up to find that my site had dropped from position 2 to somewhere on page 3 of the results. That day my earnings went from $150 to about $3 and I went into panic mode. Knowing the only change I had made to the site was adding analytics I quickly decided to remove it. The following morning my site was back at number 2.

About 4 or 5 months later I had managed to convince myself that it was a coincidence and that analytics had nothing to do with the decline in rankings. So, I again installed analytics keeping in mind that I was still in the #2 spot. The next morning, my site had fallen about 30 - 40 positions for its main search term and again my earnings plummeted.

This time, I thought maybe I will leave the analytics on for a few days and see if it recovers. A few days later my site was still losing over a $100 per day, the rankings had not come back and I decided to remove them. The next morning, you guessed it, my site was back to the number 2 position and has remained there.

So, regardless of what anyone else thinks about whether or not analytics can effect your rankings negatively, I will never install them again.

So why did this happen? My guess would be that I had a very high bounce rate, because I had a very high ctr on my adsense. In other words people would hit my site, click on an ad and leave. Analytics was tracking this bounce rate and decided that since it was so high, I must not be a "good" result for the search term and dropped me. That is the only theory that makes sense to me.

You don't know Google as much as you think you do if you call people "dumbasses" for not using a tool created by Google to "track data".

Since you are such a genius calling people "dumbasses", you do know that the Web Spam/Search Team and the Adsense Team are two completely separate departments, right? These two do NOT share any data at all unless Google as a whole is conducting some kind of investigation. Both of them use different technologies to track and analyze information.

Same thing with the Google Analytics Team, they are separate from the Web Web Spam/Search Team.

BUT has Google used data from GA to determine if certain sites provided "good user experience?" The answer is YES! Do they do it often? No, but they can occasionally do and have. So I do not blame people for not using GA... and personally knowing what I know about Google, I don't use Google Analytics either. I use Statcounter and other WP Plugins.

I think you are missing the more important point.

Yes Google doesn't care about any specific individual sites, but they do care about what should be ranking in the top of it's search results, and they have and do use GA data. Google is OBSESSED about information.

You are naive if you think they don't use or check data from Google Analytics. That's like saying you don't mind checking how much money you have earned today or last week, lol.

The larger and more important point is that Google can use GA and has used it to determine rankings.

If I misunderstood you Yukon, then I apologize. But, I don't remember saying that I was hiding from Google. I shared an experience that I had in regards to GA and everyone else can form their own opinions from there. I am not here to decide what everyone should do with their own businesses.

I don't personally use GA, but then again, I don't typically use any analytics program on my sites. When I do it is usually W3Counter.

The fact of the matter is though, there are two sides here, those that think Google doesn't use the data and those that think using GA can in fact harm your sites rankings. Which side of the fence am I on, not really sure to be honest.

Part of me says they don't use the data to determine serp positions and such, the other part says that they probably do. If I were them, I would use the data, I mean why not, its there.

Hey Dburk. You are probably right, it would merit further testing. However, even if it was a performance issue in my case, that lowered page load speed and effected my rankings, then GA would have still been at fault, in my case.

Keep in mind, I never told everyone to run out and remove their analytics code, nor did I say that anyone would have the same experience as me. Because, as I have pointed out, I don't think that all sites would suffer the same problems.

The thing is, even if this hadn't happened to me, I wouldn't use GA anyway, simply because I really don't need it. I actually didn't intend to cause a "mass scare" lol, but you know how it goes.