Google Analytics: Looking through the two way mirror!
The other night I was reading about search engines and what are the main parts to a search engine. There’s the crawler, the index and then the search interface. Throw in constantly changing search algorithms and you have one of the most if not the most success marketing tools ever created.
Google is known for search but that was yesterday and today, and in all likelihood, still in the future. Will Google only be known for search tomorrow? No, no, no, uhh, no.
Google has already been steadily reaching out it arms and grabbing onto new territory. Some of the areas that Google has ventured into are video, mobile solutions, SMS, Google Earth, blog, and many other services. If you want to learn more about Goggle¢‚¬„¢s services, click over there—-Google Services.
Now this blog isn’t about what Google is doing now, it’s about what it might be doing next with its’¢‚¬¦.. web analytics tool.
Why did they give for free? They have their “official” reasons why but I think there¢‚¬„¢s more. I want to look through the two way mirror. You know, underneath the surface, like seeing the iceberg not just above the ocean waterline, but below line where the impressive stuff is.
Theory 1: Some people I have spoken with believe Google may or has been considering selling off the data they are collecting from their web analytical tools to research groups, for example Jupiter Research or Forrester. Why and for what?
Uhh, make sense doesn’t it? With Google¢‚¬„¢s information capital they have access to literally any type of online industry out there that you can think of. That type of information is like finding the newest form of energy that will power the Earth’s consumer for the next millennium. All they have to do is sell the raw data to research firms and let them manufacture a finish product.
Theory 2: This one comes back to the night I mentioned at the beginning of this post. There are many ideas about how a search engine ranks a webpage. People keep trying to figure-out ways, both ethical and unethical, to crack, cheat, or trick the secret search algorithms in order to improve their ranking which will help improve their website conversion rate. Like other search engines, Google has to keep 3 steps in front of the crowd. One way I think the Google Team will keep its lead is by using their web analytics tool. In order to find the best and most relevant content pages for a search phrase, they might start looking at average time per page as one KPI. Bounce rate per page could be another indicator that could be factored into search algorithms. In a nutshell, Google has a wealth of new information capital that they can spend by testing for future search algorithms. Hey, I would do it.
Ummmmm, come to think of it¢‚¬¦what else could Google do with their web analytics tool? Do you have any ideas? Share with us, mate!
