August 30, 2017 | 1 minute read

Whose analytics do you trust?

Passle

The walled gardens of different social media networks can make for confusing stories when it comes to metric. As the article below shows, which features various marketing strategists sounding off, it's tricky to decide whose data story you trust. If Facebook says 50 people clicked your promoted link, but only 4 people show up on Google Analytics as having come from Facebook, who is right?

I remember watching a Google Analytics webinar by the analytics guru (a term I employ rarely), Andy Crestodina in which he said (I paraphrase): 'the data will always be wrong, but it doesn't matter'. A shocking but powerful statement aimed at reminding us that data is fallible, but still useful.

The key then is to:

Ask your data the right questions
Interpret the data you have, rather than just keep amassing more of it

Here is my report of his webinar with a few ideas for asking your Google Analytics the right questions.

“When we look at platform-provided metrics and then compare them with our own or our partner’s, there’s always a discrepancy. It’s not a Facebook-only thing; I see it with Twitter, too. LinkedIn is almost totally obtuse. Knowing what data to believe is the biggest challenge we have.” “As long as [Facebook’s] data is consistently wrong, I don’t care. If you’re wrong by the same factor, I can live with that.”