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Why Google Isn’t Enterprise Level
As I was in a client’s portfolio today inside Google Analytics I was trying to export a dashboard as a PDF, but would consistently get the following error message upon either export or trying to send the dashboard via email:
After playing around with it I was able to export as XML. I suspect the problem may be due to the fact that this particular dashboard had Google Adwords data in it, as other reports and profiles exported just fine, but so far it is just a theory. After exhausting all of my troubleshooting methods (PC vs. Mac, Firefox vs. IE vs. Safari) I opened up a ticket with Google Analytics support. As Google Analytics is a free solution they only currently offer email support, although they do have Google Analytics Authorized Consultants as well as Google Analytics Groups if you have an issue, but in this case I believe it is with Google themselves and not something I’ve defined.
I go to open my ticket and it goes through without issue. Fast forward 15 minutes when I go to check my email in Entourage. It comes up with an error that it cannot connect and that there is an error with my account. Colleagues email is working fine so I give it some time. Fast forward again over 12 hours later and my work email is still down. Upon logging into Google Apps our IT administrator is greeted with a message that there are problems with Gmail and Google is actively working on fixing the issue. Upon logging in to web mail I’m greeted with the following:
So now I’m stuck in a situation where I emailed Google Analytics for support on an error message but I’m unable to see any communication because Google Apps and Gmail is not currently functioning either. Now not every company can afford to house a Blackberry Exchange Server or Microsoft Exchange 2007 which I understand, but I’m not the first, second, or even third to point out the pitfalls of relying upon Google to essentially manage day to day business operations. Similarly on the web analytics front there are plenty of free alternatives out there to Google Analytics, but not everyone has the need or can shoulder the expense of deploying Omniture Site Catalyst or Coremetrics.
My point being that while Google offers solutions that are geared towards the small and medium business market their products are simply not up to the caliber of being termed Enterprise level when you have over 12 hours of downtime to fix email, and when you’re unable to export a report in Google Analytics as a PDF for days without getting error messages. Has anyone else had similiar issues with other Google based apps?
What If Google Cut You Off?
Over the past few months I’ve been thinking about all of the products and services that I currently use with Google, and what can happen when you are so dependent upon a single vendor when stories like when Google owns you and web searches like Gmail account disabled appear online every few months. I have no idea if Mr. Saber justly or unjustly lost access to his Google based accounts to be fair. I’m just the type of person who utilizes weekly backups to an external hard drive as well as utilizes Mozy for remote online backups. To find out what Google based products I was currently using I headed over to My Account, which listed the following services:
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AdWords |
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Analytics |
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Audio Ads |
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Base |
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Blogger |
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Docs |
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Gmail |
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Groups |
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iGoogle |
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Local Business Center |
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Notebook |
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Reader |
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Sites |
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Talk |
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Trends |
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Web History |
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Webmaster Tools |
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Website Optimizer |
I readily admit that Google has some of the best free services out there, such as Google Website Optimizer, Google Webmaster Tools, Google Analytics, Google Adwords, etc, etc. I also firmly believe Avinash and others when they list out all of the good things that Google offers. Matt also offers suggestions on how to export your data from Google into other formats. The one thing that this doesn’t take into consideration is if your account is disabled you don’t have the opportunity to go in to export your data. In future posts I’ll outline some steps that you can take to maximize your privacy settings, but my initial recommendation would be to utilize other services in conjunction with Google provided ones as a precaution as well as to verify Google data.
One thing you can do is if you use Google Analytics for your web analytics vendor also tag your pages with another solution. Auriq, Microsoft Analytics, Crazy Egg, Mint, IndexTools, StatCounter, and others all offer the ability to have your pages tagged while being free or low cost solutions. This has the added benefit of verifying Google Analytics if something looks weird or out of place within your data. An extra added benefit to having more than one JavaScript based web analytics solution implemented is you start to collect data as you cannot currently export your data from Google Analytics and upload it to a new vendor.
Other Google based products have alternatives as well. For the SEM based campaigns that I run Google Adwords normally always performs the best, but I always have Yahoo Search Marketing, Microsoft adCenter, and Ask Sponsored Listings campaigns ready to go. Most of these solutions offer you the opportunity to simply export your Adwords campaign as a CSV file and then upload them. Ask reps will even upload it for you gladly. There have been a few occassions where my ads were not displaying in Adwords and it took an Adwords rep a few hours to fix the problem. In situations where it could be longer I always want to be safe rather than sorry.
With the exception of a few tools that I use I’ve found that there are alternatives to simply having all of my eggs in a single basket when it comes to the products and services that I utilize online. If you have any other suggestions please free to post them in comments.
