Deleted Analytics (MAJOR SERP RISE!)

First of all, think about it:
you remove analytics and WITHIN HOURS the site improves?
If removing their tracking data would improve your website's ranking it would take days at least.

Second:
Google does NOT need analytics to track your data.
You use G+1 on your website? same data
you have any adsense ads? same data
Do any of your visitors use google chrome or have the google search bar installed on IE or Firefox? again, it's the same data
***Chrome + Google search bar = about HALF of the world's internet users
(they can just make a guess about the other half by multiplying their data x2)

The one thing that Google Analytics legitimately hurts your website with: the javascript - it's not perfectly implemented, as anyone who has done any website speed optimizing knows - it slows your website down a fraction of a second.
IF your website was borderline on speed and the removal of the javascript was enough to bump the speed up to a better category, then it could in fact have an impact on your rankings. Adding any other javascript based tracking (Piwick for example) will slow your website back down, possibly even slower than analytics and cause the same issue.

CONCLUSION
I've said this before:
Google HAS that data, whether you see it or not. It's FAR better to see what Google is seeing so that you can catch and correct potential problems. ***just because you can't see them doesn't mean they can't see you***
 
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OMG. I dont know if the analytic is the answer but just about 3 hours ago when I read this thread I remove my analytics and my keyword which was nowhere to be found earlier is now on No.1 in google. Just cant believe this. I was building some quite amount of backlinks around 2 days ago I dont know if this is the results but I defintely suspect it was the analytic.. I will continue to monitor my keywords and update if there is a change again.

EDIT: Now its on 6th position.. Seems its dancing around.
 
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This is an interesting post & topic.

I personally haven't tested this yet, as I don't use analytics on my money websites.

I've tried to convince clients to do so, especially those that have been hit hard recently. But none have actually ended up removing their analytics. I think I'll reach back out again to a few of them and see if they'll remove it for testing purposes.

It's funny how some people won't make changes to their site like this, especially after getting slaughtered by Penguin.
 
removed GA and WMT about a week ago! (including all tracking code and +1's) serp movement? a big FAT 0 .... no movement at all!
Shame .... back to the drawing board!
 
AR!ZONA said:
Hey gang, anyone else have an update for your sites that have removed GA? The test site I had removed it from got an interested party (it was for sale) and they wanted traffic details, so I put it back on. No results for that basically. Good news is that the site sold today and it has made me a good amount of money!

Anybody else gaining in the serps?
Click to expand...

I'll tell you what I experienced and you all can make the judgement yourself. My site is very new - not even a month old. It was nowhere in the SERPs. I had a little backlinking work done about a week back. I deleted Analytics when I read this thread two days back. At that time, my site was no where to be found in the SERPs for my main keyword. Today I checked and my site was in top 50. I don't know if it has anything to do with Analytics or if it is the result of the backlinking.

Any free tool that tells you accurately where your site lies in SERPs?
 
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@silverknight: it's the backlinking

for tracking up to 10 kw free you can use serpfox, it's working well for me at the moment
 
Removed Analytics from one mns site that had been slapped from #1 to bottom of serps for almost all kws (10 in total) yesterday. Today i'm back at #1 for 8 kw and on page 2 for the other two kw's.

I know this could be just a dance but I have been trying to get the damn site to move for over a month now without succes. The site has quite a high bounce rate and a low average visit time. I personally suspect that this is why removing GA has workered great for some while having no effect for others. I know that this probably will not convince all the nay sayers but still, I'm convinced that the removal of analytics has been what caused the site to finally start moving.
 
to the OP and others who report positive results after removing GA - do you use adsense on your sites?
 
The site has quite a high bounce rate and a low average visit time. I personally suspect that this is why removing GA has workered great for some while having no effect for others.
Click to expand...
I understand your logic, however consider this - Google still has the previous data about bounce rate, even if you remove analytics from your website (and even if you delete your analytics account) - they aren't going to consider their bounce-rate data stale just a few hours later.

Below is an interesting note about how bounce-rate could affect your ranking - and note that for "bounce to SERPS" tracking, Google doesn't need anything installed on your website (so it's something that they could measure equally for all websites)

http://afterpanda.com/content/matt-cutts-dodges-dannys-questions-serp-bounce-smx-qa-session

also read this:
http://en.posizionamentozen.com/blog/bounce-rate-and-rankings/

I agree with the conclusion that bounce affects your rankings, I've seen it in my sites.
But it's not analytics bounce rate data.
 
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Mine is on the opposite. I took off all Google Analytics code from all my sites few months ago. After the Panda Update, most of my sites still got hit. Recently I started to insert back all the sites with Google Analytics, I saw a few sites are having warning like unnatural links, post got DMCA complaint. Also at the crawler errors, almost all my sites are having thousands of 404 errors.

I started rectified one by one like delete off those posts that received DMCA complaint, install 404 redirect plugin and so on. And now I can see some of my sites ranking are up and traffic also increase.
 
I was curios and i deleted few days back one of my websites from Analytics. Nothing happen ... so it's just a myth.
 
for those who have seen a rise in serps since removing GA .... are you still holding position? and how long has it been since you removed GA?
 
Well I'd rather google not have that data no matter what so I use Piwik on my sites. At one time I did remove analytics and my rankings bounced up without doing anything else. I had a very high bounce rate back then, this was 3 years ago when I was just barely starting with owing websites and still using traffic generating stuff to get traffic instead of the SERPS.
 
I have a few sites i moved across to new hosting - removing analytics and webmaster tools in the process. Obviously there is an argument that hosting speeds etc. have played a part however overall the sites seems to jump in rankings significantly for their targeted terms.
 
Last week I rebuilt my page. Check my GA - fail ( code was not there). I probably accidentally deleted it. So I placed it again (and reup sitemap) - the second day fall down 300 places.
 
agente808 said:
I understand your logic, however consider this - Google still has the previous data about bounce rate, even if you remove analytics from your website (and even if you delete your analytics account) - they aren't going to consider their bounce-rate data stale just a few hours later.

Below is an interesting note about how bounce-rate could affect your ranking - and note that for "bounce to SERPS" tracking, Google doesn't need anything installed on your website (so it's something that they could measure equally for all websites)

http://afterpanda.com/content/matt-cutts-dodges-dannys-questions-serp-bounce-smx-qa-session

also read this:
http://en.posizionamentozen.com/blog/bounce-rate-and-rankings/

I agree with the conclusion that bounce affects your rankings, I've seen it in my sites.
But it's not analytics bounce rate data.
Click to expand...

True, in theory they still have the historical data and could even get fresh data through other means. But still, the rankings are based on a mathematical formula. From what I just experienced I'm convinced that removing Analytics has changed the outcome of the algoritm for my site. I offer no proof. But if I assume that it was indeed the removal of analytics that caused the increase in rankings, then the first thing that comes to mind is the tracking of bounce and time spent on site. I'm not saying I have a definitive answer to this discussion I merely offer a plausible explanation for what I'm seeing.
 
As nice as this would be if it were true, I don't think Google would ever do it... Surely they'd know that IF (when) found out, they'd lose a large portion of their GA users (IMers) - who in turn are going to move their customers/clients away from GA too.
 
Let's just all switch to piwik, I mean we can check Traffic on our phones!
 
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