Blogchat with Brian Clifton, EMEA Head of Web Analytics, Google

For this week’s blogchat I caught up with Brian Clifton who is Head of Web Analytics in EMEA for Google. In that role Brian is responsible for the development of Google Analytics in Europe and I was interested in his thoughts about the effect that Google Analytics had had on the web analytics market and also on that thorny issue of data privacy.

Here’s what he had to say…

Brian, how would you assess the impact that Google Analytics has had on the market here in the UK and the rest of Europe as well?

The biggest change has been the huge growth in adoption. Web analytics has gone from a relatively small niche industry to something that is now almost integral with online marketing. The analytics industry is now at least 10 times bigger today than it was a year ago. What’s encouraging for my team is that the growth in adoption matches that seen in North America. Having been in the industry for many years, it really is fantastic to see how much benefit companies are getting from understanding more about web analytics.

Do you see any differences between the various markets in Europe that you operate in?

Measuring success is a key part of search engine marketing and search in general and this is the case in all European markets. As you can imagine there are always differences between markets but what is exciting is that across the board growth is strong. It shows there is great demand for such products and we will continue to work hard to analyse individual market requirements.

How do you address the data privacy issues that have been raised about Google Analytics? Do you find that it is a barrier to adoption by some potential users or in particular markets?

As you know, Google takes user privacy extremely seriously and it’s worth setting out how we approach the issue. At Google we build privacy protections into our products from the ground up, and none of our products use any personal data unless that use is fully disclosed in a privacy policy.

We always ask people to actively opt-in to services that use sensitive data, we allow people to use most of our services anonymously, and we even tell them how they can disable our cookies that they have been sent. Moreover, we think it’s important to be clear about what our position is, so we write our privacy policies in clear, simple language so that users can easily understand them – they are not the usual legal jargon.

Of course, for advertisers we also wish to provide accountability and transparency for our advertiser solutions (Adwords, Adsense etc). Hence Google Analytics is a trust building tool. Google will never do anything to harm that trust relationship as that would severely damage our business.

One of the latest announcements has been the entry of Google into the testing market through the launch of Google Website Optimizer. What was the rationale for that development?

Google Analytics is a great tool for web site owners to understand how visitors interact with their web site. It tells you what has happened, but it cannot tell you what to do next. That requires intelligent people to analyse and interpret the data then test for improvements. The WSO tool is the testing platform to do this - completing the loop of Measure, Analyse, Act.

How do you see the web analytics landscape developing over the next couple of years? What are some of the big issues that need to be addressed?

Although analytics is becoming mainstream for pro-active online marketers, there are still companies that have not yet really touched the potential online medium for marketing and how it can radically improve their return on investment. Part of our work is to show the opportunities that online marketing can offer. It wouldn’t be right to pick out one sector or another as there are opportunities for companies across them all to better reach their customers. Analytics is a crucial part of this equation and it’s a fantastic moment for the industry as we are seeing companies understanding better how their customers interact with them, which is good for us all.

With such huge adoption numbers, I feel training and education is the next opportunity for development. The Web Analytics Association is making great progress in that regard and I look forward to more education and training initiatives in the future. I also believe the industry’s terminology will simplify along with the products in terms of setup and User Interface. Once this happens we will see the integration of web analytics data into the heart of organisations. No longer a separate tool for the web, web analytics data will be a part of every day business intelligence metrics.

How will Google be addressing those issues?

We are always keen to do what we can to work with marketers to make tools useful to them – that’s why we value feedback from our users. We will continue to develop innovative ways to help people and we’re currently working on adding a GA course in addition to the regular Google University series that runs at conferences and exhibitions, such as Search Engine Strategies. And that’s not all - as you know, we just announced the new Website Optimizer multivariate testing platform and that Google Checkout now works with Google Analytics.

Without giving specifics, I think there are other integrations that make sense for Google Analytics, but you’ll have to stay tuned to hear what those are. We have hired some of the best minds in the industry and have partnered with many of the top analysis companies to provide professional services.

Finally, what keeps you busy in your spare time – assuming that Google lets you have any?

Well I still get chance to go down to the gym, though my judo black belt seems to be a long way away. Golf is what I am currently using to relax me, though it is strangely addictive!

Thanks Brian.

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