Why are the Mahalo SERP page views pulled from Google Analytics using their API?

Rob -- The bottom line is the dev team is super-overloaded, can't be everywhere at once (most of the time, anyway :) ). Much of the time, my life is the 'art of the possible', if you will: prioritizing many competing things. This was one battle we chose not to fight ... but we may indeed have to fight it, as you suggest.

Every time we do something like this, however, that means something else moves OFF the table and does not get done. The startups that succeed are the ones that maintain focus and 'eat of the land' (Art of War, in our world, meaning don't re-invent the wheel / use open source). Focus on core competencies.

But this many now BE a core competency of the new system. So we'll have to have a serious look at it on Monday, I think. - Mark.

It's accurate and speed isn't a problem unless you have nothing better to do than watch live stats. Also, while I haven't looked, it may be tied into AdSense or other services.

We are probably going to have to build a real-time system ourselves. We tried to avoid this, but it seems like the Google Analytics API is not super reliable. So, for now we have older stats that are a little off and in 10 days I think we'll have our own system built (or GA figured out).

The system for Mahalo Answers page tracking is our own FYI. We're just trying to avoid having to build our own tracking system because of the database server strain.

Mahalo probably knows that Google Analytics API is not super reliable and considers it to be good enough. Good enough allows Mahalo to operate without invest expensive coders to build a new system themselves. However, as member begin to question states Mahalo will have to page track manually, an impossible task.

The goals, clout, and intent will determine whether Mahalo can build its own tracking system. The system will need to meet their business requirements and user activities needs.

I am currently using Nielsen NetRatings and Google Analytics to measure the sites I manage. I use Nielsen because it is more widely accepted by agencies and advertisers. I use Google because it is quick and easy to customize to my liking, and it is good to have redundancy.

Additionally, I am able to pull reports and forecasts on ad impressions from DART, which is really what the advertisers are looking for. They rarely agree on most of the metrics, but they are consistent in their inaccuracies... For instance, PageViews are always 5-6% greater on GA. That being said, in my personal experience the absolute metrics are somewhat irrelevant... relative metrics are instructive enough.

I am not concerned if I received 120,000 page views on a section of content vs. 110,000. For example, a section received 20% more page views in a given period than any other section. Or a feature on an event (say, SXSW) received 50% more traffic from sites linking in than it did last year.

Or, visitors to a given section are 15% more likely to register than the the average user (if the sample size is large enough to be of consequence)... In my experience, this information is more useful than if 13,460 or 12,345 visitors came to the site.

Analytics is a tough problem. I have been participating in the Woopra beta woopra.com/ and have been impressed with their real time analytics. I have been comparing GA with Woopra and have seen pretty good agreement in my limited experience.

Maybe Jason should have a chat with them.

Mahalo probably uses some of the more advanced features of Google Analytics to track where traffic is going, where it's coming from, AdSense integration, etc. Having a local stats engine and Google Analytics on each page would make the page heavier (both on the client side and potentially on the server side). I guess they figure that if Google Analytics has a very detailed statistics engine that is free, why should they make employees work on an entirely new stats engine? Wouldn't it be better to fix up all of the Mahalo bugs and add new features?

I cant really gove you an answer,but what I can give you is a way to a solution, that is you have to find the anglde that you relate to or peaks your interest. A good paper is one that people get drawn into because it reaches them ln some way.As for me WW11 to me, I think of the holocaust and the effect it had on the survivors, their families and those who stood by and did nothing until it was too late.