I’ve heard many things about Google Analytics as I browse the web looking for the truth on SEO and search engine traffic.

There are people everywhere telling you just about anything to get your attention.

Some say,”Don’t put Google Analytics on your website, they steal the data for their rankings!”

But is it true?

Of course they can if they wanted. But that was never a concern for me. I use analytics sometimes, and sometimes I don’t. It depends on the level of effort I’m putting into a website.

I much prefer the tools provided in my cPanel. Why?

Well, the one thing I believe is that Google never tells you everything. They are sneaky like that. The tools in my cPanel read the data straight from my domain on my server without any scripting by a third party.

So I trust that more than a script made by Google. I don’t consider Google analytics a necessity.  Not even close.  But I do use it, because it’s free, and it helps more correlate traffic analysis in with a slightly different twist.

I have found the results vary dramatically at times from what I see straight off my server.  Thus I don’t consider my thoughts about reliability of Google Analytics data unfounded.

But do they cheat and steal your analytics to do search engine Ranking?  The answer is right here…

Matt Cutts of Google Says…

He absolutely never uses analytics for search quality analyses and determining ranking.

It is kept strictly as a tool for you, as a webmaster, or website owner to keep track of your customers and traffic on your web pages.  Your search engine traffic and results are not determined by Google Analytics in any way.

Here’s a short video, straight from the horses mouth…

Regardless of what the forum self-declared experts, and the yahoo answers spammers tell you, Google isn’t stealing your analytics to help determine your search engine ranking.

What do you think?  Are they lying to you?  Leave your comment below.

- Wayne Sharer