Hey guys,

Has anybody made agood comparison of both Microsoft Analytics and Google Analytics? I run them both and see some minor differences. Is it clear why these differences occur?

They are both loggin the same pages, yet they both show different visitor numbers. Also my goals and funnels are set up the same on both systems, but also here there are differences. Does one discriminate visitors more?

What visitor number is the truth?

Any ideas?

Good question.

My personal oppinion is that Microsoft looks nicer and has more options, while Google has better usuability. Microsoft is often a little slow, but has some great perks like the tree view (once you've got your grip on it, it can be very usefull). Also the demographics in MS are better, as Google has none (appart form location).

Other MS plus points are it's counting of visitor numbers. Microsoft counts a unique visitor as it enters the site. Google counts them for each page seperately and them adds them up, showing a larger number in general.

Another difference is in the natural referal details. MS differentiates between the location and type of searches, even if they have al been in Google. Also the effect of social networks like StumbleUpon are different. Google accounts them as referals, while MS accounts that traffic to 'direct traffic'.

Selecting date ranges for your reports is available in both systems. Google was fastest with this, but with the new Silverlight plugin, MS has an edge.

Getting to your information is a lot harder in Microsoft Analytics though, as you generally need a lot of clicks to get to where you need to be.

Google still remains the standard and some think the better of the two. However, please remember that Microsoft is still in Beta phase and is still improving thier tool as we speak.

I still believe Microsoft will eventually win or, at least, get a draw.

Two intersting posts on the subject;
http://www.businesshut.com/blog/2008/03 ... ytics.html
http://www.whencanistop.com/2008/05/goo ... enter.html

Hope this helped! And are there any other oppinions??

I like Microsoft Analytics best. But this is probably because I'm used tot it and have some campaigns running on their systems.

It does take some time getting used to. But that's for both systems. For once, I think Microsoft has made a worthy opponent for the Google empire.

Thanks for this admin!

I also read the post on visitor numbers being different.. Never noticed it though, I rather took it for granted that none of them was speaking the truth.

you're welcome!

Thanks for this. There was another post on the difference between Google and Microsoft, but I didn't really understand it that well. This post is easier to understand.

I like the unique visitor counter as well. It doesn't give me the illusion that a lot of people are visiting my site, when in fact it's just a small number of people.