I’ve been playing with Google Analytics. It promises some pretty sophisticated looking server log analysis. I’m a sucker for web logs - tail -f access_log is one of my favourite TV shows - so I’m always excited about new log analysis tools. Unfortunately I haven’t yet experienced the thrill that only a tidy looking pie chart can provide with Google Analytics. I’ve added five sites to my profile and placed the required tracking code on them; I’ve verified that Google sees the tracking code and yet, some 30 or so hours since I added the first site Analytics can’t draw me a graph.
Admittedly the reason why I didn’t see any stats in the first 20 hours was because I was using Safari. Eventually I found a well hidden fragment of help text that explains that the reports don’t work with Safari. Cool that a service which identifies users’ browsers as one of its functions can’t identify my browser and tell me it’s not supported.
Switch to Firefox and I get a little further - now I get the graphs but they’re all saying there have been no hits at all on my site. Maybe I’ve offended somebody?
Bear in mind that this isn’t the usual perpetual Google beta; this thing is supposed to be ready for prime time. I suppose it’ll work eventually but it certainly doesn’t work as advertised. One thing I do like: even though they’re not supporting the Mac’s native browser they have paid a back handed complement to Cupertino by ripping off OS X’s little progress spinners. So that’s nice.
Update: Peter Strand has instructions for configuring Firefox so you won’t be tracked by Google Analytics here. Slightly ironic then that he’s using Google Ads (essentially the same technology) on his page.
Another update: This just in from Google Analytics Support:
From: "Analytics Support"
To: andy
Subject: Re: Tracking has not been validated or added…
Hello,
Thank you for your email and your patience.
We have received your report regarding the problem with the "Check Status" alert update. Our engineers are currently working to solve the problem and hope to reach a resolution shortly. This will not affect data collection or report generation if you have already tagged your website with the Google Analytics Tracking Code.
Additionally, I understand that you aren't seeing data in your reports, even though your tracking code has been set up for over six hours. We apologize for any inconvenience. We have collected your data since you installed the tracking code on your site, and are continuing to collect this data throughout the day.
We are currently in the process of creating reports from your data. You should be able to see your reports populated with data later today. Please note that this reporting delay is associated with unexpected demand for Google Analytics. Under normal circumstances, the data in your reports will be at most six hours old.
For additional questions, please visit the Analytics Help Center at http://www.google.com/support/analytics. If you're unable to find an answer to your question on our site, please feel free to reply to this email.
Sincerely,
Analytics Support
Summary: we’ve been swamped by the demand. From poking around in the tracking Javascript and information that’s revealed by the error messages I’ve seen I’d guess that they haven’t yet migrated the service to their legendary server farm. Maybe it doesn’t scale that well yet? You’d have thought Google - of all people - would have braced themselves for the traffic, no?
