Piwik vs. Google Analytics: The Analytical Showdown, Analyzed
Date: May 30, 2014Category: Author: Sterling Shaw
When it comes to websites, SEO, or business in general, knowledge is power! You want to know as much about the people who are visiting your site as possible. Likes and dislikes, spending habits, location, how they heard about you, shoe size, favorite color and really any other pertinent or impertinent information that you might be able to glean from them. Take Google and Facebook for example, these two companies (aside from seeking world domination) collect data on just about every aspect of our lives, this can be scary to some but it is all in the name of enhancing “user experience” so we let it slide.
So Naturally having some way of knowing who is visiting your site is critical to your business and that is where a handy dandy web analytics tool comes in. There are many out there that profess to be the best but I just want to mention two, Piwik and Google Analytics, you may be asking yourself “why just two”? The answer comes down to one simple yet magic word: “FREE”. Both web analytics tools are free to use for anyone (there are paid versions and services but 99% of websites probably don’t need them)
Let me begin by saying that both tools are great and this post is in no way meant to hate on one or the other, nor is it meant to be a comprehensive guide I would recommend visiting both analytic tools websites for that. I have been using Google Analytics for some time now and I enjoy it (I mean come on, it’s Google! Who doesn’t love Google?) and for a lot of people GA is perfectly capable of doing exactly what they want and to those people I would say go get em tiger!
I was recently introduced to Piwik though and I must say there are a number of reasons I have taken to using it over Google Analytics. Let me elaborate on a few of those reasons.
- User Interface
- Open source
- Control Control Control
- It’s not Google
User Interface
I was very impressed with the layout and ease of use of Piwik, it is very clean and neat, and you are able to quickly customize what information you see using the many widgets that they offer and like I said earlier, knowledge is power and the faster you get that knowledge the faster you can join Google and Facebook in world domination!
Open Source Analytics
The fact that it is open source is very nice! You may be reading this and wondering what open source is. Simply put it means that the code that makes it all run is freely available and can be modified to fit your needs. this may not be too appealing to the average Joe but can be great news for those who want to get the most out of the tool.
You’re in control of your data
Third it is hosted directly on your server. This means control, since the service is on your server that means the data is somewhere you can get to if you ever need it and you don’t have to worry about it being accessed and used by other people that you may not want messing with your analytics data. This is great news for those us who don’t want big companies selling our website search statistics and traffic data.
Finally, It’s not Google! Remember how I said that Google collects information on everything? Well this is our chance to take back some power by denying them some of that information! I know this may sound strange from someone who just professed his great love for Google products but I have to draw the line somewhere, right?
Whether you are worried that Google knows too much and is poised to take over the world or you just want to know how many people visited your site yesterday it’s important that you have some form of analytics monitoring your site. With the knowledge of how many people are visiting your site, where they are from, and what search terms they used to find you, you will be able to better tailor your website incorporating those search terms into your content and focusing your efforts on certain demographics which will improve SEO and drive traffic onto your site, ultimately improving your business.