11-20-2008, 11:33 AM
Quote:It is critical to know how any web metrics package calculates its numbers, even Google. You cannot assume, no matter how big the company, that the numbers will be correct.
Google Analytics is probably the most popular web analytics tool in use today. It is certainly the best tool you can get for the price -- it's free and worth every penny. Unfortunately, like every web analytics tool, it is not 100 percent accurate. There are reasons why it is impossible to build perfectly accurate web analytics software, which I have covered previously in "Things that throw your stats," so we should not blame Google for this. However, Google Analytics is different from other products in that it has been intentionally designed by Google to be inaccurate over and above the normal inaccuracies that are inevitable. These inaccuracies are so glaring that most people are getting a very false picture of what is happening in their sites. This article will explain where these inaccuracies lie and provide methods to correct for them....
full article: http://www.imediaconnection.com/content/21144.asp