Web Analytics for Google
According to Google 2016 Form 10-K, “The goal of our advertising business is to deliver relevant ads at just the right time and to give people useful commercial information, regardless of the device they’re using…” (Rothaermel, 2017) Also, Alphabet runs advertising using a “freemium” model, whereby paid advertisements by publishers will be used to make Google services such as Search, YouTube, and Maps free. Google AdWords discusses that each publisher that advertises with Google hopes to increase online purchases, get customers through the door, start a conversation, or grow their apps. (Google AdWords, 2018)
Google is able to track the success of each publisher’s campaigns in a myriad of ways. Using web analytics through Google Analytics, they may use counts and ratios such as actual page views or page views per visit. It is very important that Google can quantify the value of each customer long-term by following unique customers per visit using “cookies”. These are examples of on-site analytics of a visitor’s journey, but off-site measurements are just as valuable. Companies such as SimilarWeb, comScore and Nielsen Netratings can provide competitive intelligence and traffic comparisons.
Google would target customers that would be most likely to return to Google Search for a variety of purchases, transactions, queries or entertainment. Each customer would then be categorized based on level of loyalty by frequency of search terms and Google would then “predict the search” based on user’s profile. The more site visits through Google the more loyal he or she is to that product/service/offering. A good repeat visitor goal may be 2 or more visits per month where we know we will be able to follow these repeat customers and provide intel.
Google should target that each customer stays on the Google search page as frequently as possible. Seriously, I would expect that Google Search should maintain recency of 0 days between last visit with every user because it has become a ubiquitous tool for everyday use. If I were a publisher of a website that posts ads on Google I would want recency between visits to be 1 day or less because that way I know my customers are happy with my service online and will most likely purchase and come back.
Google would want people to stay on Google Search as long as possible so more than 60 seconds. This is because they need to present as many ads to the visitor as possible to collect ad revenue. Publishers also want as much exposure as possible so the longer the stay the better.
Similar to length of visit, the depth of visit would tie the number of pages each visitor views before leaving. I would want my visitors to stay on my website and go to as many pages as possible so they can see more stuff and make a purchase. Google also wants 3 or more page visits per visitor because this exposes the visitor to more ads, generating ad revenue.
Similarweb.com states that avg. visit duration is 9 minutes and 10 seconds, 9.33 pages per visit and 31.14% bounce rate.
Though finding real-time visitor feedback on Google.com is difficult, they have provided Success Stories from past customers who used Google Analytics. https://www.google.com/analytics/success-stories/#?modal_active=none.
Works Cited
Alphabet Inc. (2018). Alphabet Inc. Form 10-K For the Fiscal Year Ended December 31, 2017. Retrieved from https://abc.xyz/investor/: https://abc.xyz/investor/pdf/20171231_alphabet_10K.pdf
Google AdWords. (2018, 6 29). Digital marketing strategies to achieve your goals. Retrieved from Google.com: https://adwords.google.com/home/marketing-goals/
Rothaermel, F. T. (2017, September 27). Alphabet's Google. Retrieved from Harvard Business Publishing: https://hbsp.harvard.edu