A while back Microsoft had announced that they would soon have an analytics offering for the general public, jumping in yet again to compete with Google. While the project is still in closed beta, here's a first look at Microsoft's foray into the free analytics space. I have to warn you, it's about to get ugly.
How many clicks does it take to get to the center of a Microsoft product?
One of the first things I immediately notice is just how difficult it is to get where I want to go. Let's say I just want to see how many visitors I've had that day. I log in, click Analytics, click Profiles, choose the profile I want, and then see how many visitors I've had that day. For those keeping count, that is four clicks versus two for Analytics.
Alright, well let's see how many people are visiting my About Dustin Coates page. As a baseline, Google Analytics takes three clicks (none if the page you are looking for is one of your top five most popular). Gatineau takes five. While this doesn't sound like much more, it's actually much worse in practice. You have to click through each individual folder to get to the page you want to see. This might usually involve you having to open your site and find the exact path of the page you want. Worse, if there's any way to see what is your top rated content, I can't find it.
But what about the demographic information?
Gatineau's strongest selling point was that you could see the demographic data on who visited your content. But, as you'll see in the graphic below, that doesn't work too well, either. Around 90% of all visitors came back as unknown for a given segment. The only demographic segment that comes back with meaningful data is geographic location and on this as well the data is not presented as usefully as it is with Google Analytics.
Other issues with Microsoft Gatineau
-How do I find out what pages people are landing on for a given search term? This another one where, if it's offered I can't find it.
-Goals and funnels can't be set up within the profile viewing area. I have to go all the way back to the list of different profiles.
-Gatineau is pretty slow. This is a minor point, but with all the clicks that are required, it adds up.
-It's not entirely free. You have to create an AdCenter account if you want to use it, which is five dollars. Google doesn't require this and, honestly, I wouldn't pay five dollars for Gatineau at the moment.
In closing
To be completely fair, Gatineau is in beta and there are obviously improvement coming along (for example report exporting is not available at the moment). However, Gatineau has a long way to go, even considering the private beta tag. Microsoft can compete with Google if they want to do so, but they aren't even close right now.