Difference between QA Analytics and Google Analytics

in Data to be collected

It’s a rough image, though, Google Analytics collects information on user attributes such as male and female users, as well as information such as “they viewed this page at this time.”

QA Analytics, on the other hand, captures detailed, anonymized user behavior on the site, such as mouse clicks and scrolling within a page.

in Appearance and operability

While Google Analytics is statistical*, QA Analytics is oriented toward intuitive and visual tools. Although there is some overlap, the two are complementary.

*The upcoming Google Analytics App+Web property is event-driven, so the data is slightly similar in concept to QA Analytics, but Google Analytics tends to have rougher data granularity due to data capacity issues and is more difficult to configure, so we still believe that the two are complementary.

Data that can easily make a difference in numbers and data

Page browsing time and time spent on site

QA Analytics measures the actual time users spend browsing with an accuracy of +/- 3 seconds. Because we measure actual browsing behavior, for example, we do not count time spent while the user is browsing another site or operating another application in the browser.

On the other hand, Google Analytics keeps track of the time each page is viewed, and the page view time is determined by the difference in the times.

Therefore, there will be the defferences like following:

  • Let’s say a user opens a mailer while browsing a site, sends an email for 5 minutes, returns to the browser and starts working again. The time spent on the site will always be more than 5 minutes in Google Analytics. QA Analytics, on the other hand, does not measure that 5 minutes. Therefore, QA Analytics generally has a shorter dwell time.
  • In Google Analytics, the time spent on a page that has gone straight home is zero (because no difference is required), but in QA Analytics, the time spent on a page that has gone straight home is also recorded.

Number of users and sessions

Google Analytics basically records access to your site the moment it is accessed, depending on where you put the tag.

QA Analytics, on the other hand, captures data after the user has started to take action, so users who browse the site and leave directly within a second or so will likely not be recorded.

Therefore, in general, QA Analytics tends to have fewer users and sessions than Google Analytics data counts. The difference is often a few percent, but the difference tends to be larger if the site has a lot of direct returns within seconds.

Also, unlike Google Analytics, QA Analytics is not affected by the ITP (third-party tracking prevention function) adopted by iOS, so there is no increase in new users only on iOS. For more details, refer to Users and Sessions.

*When Google Analytics and QA Analytics values are significantly different.

There may be an issue. For more information, see Google Analytics and QA Analytics values are very different.

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