Google Ads (formerly AdWords) is Google's pay-per-click online advertising program. With Google Ads users set their budget and choose where their ads appear in search listings, and on partner websites. Google Ads uses cost-per-click (CPC) bidding.
N/A
Google Analytics
Score 8.2 out of 10
N/A
Google Analytics is perhaps the best-known web analytics product and, as a free product, it has massive adoption. Although it lacks some enterprise-level features compared to its competitors in the space, the launch of the paid Google Analytics Premium edition seems likely to close the gap.
$0
per month
Pricing
Google Ads
Google Analytics
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Google Analytics 360
150,000
per year
Google Analytics
Free
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Google Ads
Google Analytics
Free Trial
No
No
Free/Freemium Version
No
Yes
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
No
No
Entry-level Setup Fee
No setup fee
No setup fee
Additional Details
—
—
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Google Ads
Google Analytics
Considered Both Products
Google Ads
Verified User
Account Manager
Chose Google Ads
Against Bing, Adwords is the better platform, because many more users search on google instead of bing. This means the reach is quite restricted to Bing. As a whole, AdWords gives much better experience and support than Bing. Google Analytics is an additional tool to AdWords, …
Google Ads generally results in a much larger volume of users & available traffic. Generally, by comparison to other search engine platforms, the impression count, overall number of clicks, and impression share are much higher on Google as a result of nearly 65% of all search …
We have observed that the Bing Ads performs better than the Google Ads when we target the older audience. The cost per conversion is also better than the Google Ads on Bing because of low competition possibly. However, Google Ads is preferred by us mostly because of the …
Our agency invests heavily in Google Ads (particularly paid search advertising) on behalf of our clients relative to competitors like Microsoft and Yahoo because Google is the top search engine in the world. Google collects the most search data which enables the company to …
Google Ads is pretty strong when it comes to search and shopping campaigns. It's a great tool to target people who are ready to buy and actively looking for products we have to offer. On the other hand, Facebook has been a great tool for raising awareness, brand uplift, and …
Bing Ads is an indirect competitor to AdWords, which does much of the same as AdWords (with a reduced level of detail) on Bing searches. We mainly used Bing Ads to complement AdWords activity, meaning, if we have saturated the market via Google, we will then use Bing Ads to get …
It really depends on the objective of the campaign. Google Ads (formerly AdWords) is great for service businesses and e-commerce stores, whereas Facebook is really great for brand awareness and e-commerce. LinkedIn is best for B2B and finding job seekers. I believe that if used …
Bing is very similar (to the degree that you can essentially import and export campaigns between AdWords and Bing). Generally though, it gets less volume overall, and we've found the quality of leads that we do get from Bing to generally be more inconsistent than what we see …
I purchase a lot of Facebook advertising and continuously wish Facebook would study the Google system for training on AdWords. If you take the time, AdWords offers incredible support and tools to help anyone be successful.
AdWords has the best ad management system in the marketplace, way more advanced and powerful features.
Verified User
Employee
Chose Google Ads
The amount of users is bigger in Google AdWords.
Google Analytics
Verified User
Manager
Chose Google Analytics
Google provides a wide suite of products that all tie into Google Analytics. Some that I use most often are Tag Manager, Ads and Datastudio. All of these connect directly with Analytics and allow me to accomplish my goals. For example, Ads will connect and show me what Ads are …
I used Facebook Analytics for mobile and web games but Facebook Analytics was discontinued. Google Analytics is more universal and is suitable for both web and native mobile applications. Facebook Analytics is more suitable for apps and games on web and mobile. For mobile …
Handles the basics better with minimal training and investment, but falls short at optimization work. Google Analytics has remained the backbone of our web analytics work for a very long time, so it is a nice "default" option to always have present in our programs even if we …
I haven't really used other competitors of Google Analytics because most of my clients are not heavily eCommerce based. Most of our clients host things like blogs or product information within their website, and are curious to see what level of viewership they're getting, or …
I chose Google Analytics because, without the Premium version, it is affordable and easy to use for basic ad tracking. It is a great way to see who is viewing our ads, which is a big part of my job. I am able to really collect all the data we need in order to better target our …
Google Analytics, hands-down, provides a greater scope and higher-level of data availability ACROSS multiple platforms. Not only does Google Analytics natively allow for a vast array of data collection, analysis, reporting, and visualization opportunities, but it also affords …
Both are great, just different. Most clients believe Google is the golden standard due to the strong presence of Google's brand everywhere, but Adobe seems to have stronger, drill down tracking at the expense of a harder to use interface.
Mixpanel and Kissmetrics are good systems, and for the most part they can do the same thing that GA does, but they are more basic. If an average person, if you don't have a desire for deep data, I think these two platforms are better choices.
Google Analytics provides a more comprehensive set of data when it comes to website analytics and it is free. While Alexa will cost you an amount to view the full data it provides, it still simply does not provide the necessary data you need to analyze and customize your …
We also use Pardot to monitor traffic to our site. Google Analytics gives you a lot more data. Pardot is more focused on once the traffic to our site identifies themselves (by filling out a form) and how they engage with us after that (email opens, website views, etc.).
We haven´t really worked with so many other products. But looked at quite a few, and they can never compare when it comes to the balance between price and features.
Smaller analytics packages can be very useful, even if you're fluent in GA. I love Gaug.es. It's real-time and can give me a 50,000 ft view of all of my clients at a glance. If you need to know what's happening in real-time (and often you do) GA is okay, but I find other tools …
Google Analytics allows you to measure the online traffic to your website and helps in making further improvements in your advertising campaign. Google Analytics can be the best choice for marketers, as it is completely free and works well for small companies with small …
We have used Omniture and WebTrends. WebTrends is an outdated analytics tool. Omniture, while robust is just not as customizable. Basically, if you have no intention or no need to do customization and you just want out-of-the-box reporting and not willing to spend the time in …
I find Google Analytics to be very comparable from a reporting/data analysis standpoint. I find the Adobe Analytics and complimentary packages to provide a much more robust set of tools that meets additional business needs.
Verified User
Manager
Chose Google Analytics
The cost-free aspect of GA is undeniably a key feature for organisations which don't require the level of customisation offered by the paid-for solutions. An organisation which opts for GA won't need any paid solutions to fill in gaps.
Clients who are selling products such as dresses, clothes, jewelry, beauty products, etc., generally work well. Also, in some cases, it doesn't fetch a good ROAS for very small business owners. If a client is already doing well in SEO, the probability for it to perform well over Google Ads is always enhanced, and if it doesn't have a good organic reach, Google Ads also suffers.
Google Analytics is particularly well suited for tracking and analyzing customer behavior on a grocery e-commerce platform. It provides a wealth of information about customer behavior, including what products are most popular, what pages are visited the most, and where customers are coming from. This information can help the platform optimize its website for better customer engagement and conversion rates. However, Google Analytics may not be the best tool for more advanced, granular analysis of customer behavior, such as tracking individual customer journeys or understanding customer motivations. In these cases, it may be more appropriate to use additional tools or solutions that provide deeper insights into customer behavior.
Keyword Research - Google Ads has a handy built in tool that helps determine important keywords to target both for Ads & SEO
Intuitive Analytics Dashboad - Google Ads makes it fairly simple to see and analyze important metrics on how your ads are running week after week
Intuitive Setup - Google Ads makes it easy to figure out how to run ads with little to no training (although training is highly recommended to run effective ads), as their interface is clean and easy to figure out (unlike competing products).
I think Google Ads is good for getting your company out there and becoming more visible to potential customers in general. However, for specific product launches, social media advertising might be a better fit. Also, our user base is younger so social media is a better channel for our target audience.
We will continue to use Google Analytics for several reasons. It is free, which is a huge selling point. It houses all of our ecommerce stores' data, and though it can't account for refunds or fraud orders, gives us and our clients directional, real time information on individual and group store performance.
I suspect that Google Ads is not for the novice user. I told my 'Ad Specialist' that I was not the best on computers and apprehensive about my ability to maneuver the website. He told me on more than one occasion that "I work for you...I'm your sherpa...call me any time or send me an email"! The sales and service representatives for Google Ads are very well trained, though not much integrity. Despite that I told my Google Ad Specialist that my website was incomplete the ad was published live anyway! Beware that the 'talk' is good, but it ain't cheap!
Google Analytics provides a wealth of data, down to minute levels. That is it's greatest detriment: find the right information when you need it can be a cumbersome task. You are able to create shortcuts, however, so it can mitigate some of this problem. Google is continually refining Analytics, so I do not doubt there will be improvements
We all know Google is at top when it comes to availability. We have never faced any such instances where I can suggest otherwise. All you need is a Google account, a device and internet connection to use this super powerful tool for reporting and visualising your site data, traffic, events, etc. that too in real time.
This has been a catalyst for improving our site's traffic handling capabilities. We were able to identify exit% from our sites through it and we used recommendations to handle and implement the same in our sites. We have been increasing the usage of Google Analytics in our sites and never had any performance related issues if we used Analytics
We have not yet had an account rep who hasn't tried to bully me or other employees to raise our budgets. At the same time, several years ago, one attempted to help refine our ads and ended up changing the ads to be something we were not affiliated with
The Google reps respond very quickly. However, sometimes they can overly call you to set up an apportionment. I'm very proficient and sometimes when I talk to reps, they give beginner tutorials and insights that are a waste of time. I wish Google would understand my level of expertise and assign me to a rep (long-term) that doesn't have to walk me through the basics.
love the product and training they provide for businesses of all sizes. The following list of links will help you get started with Google Analytics from setup to understanding what data is being presented by Google Analytics.
I think my biggest take away from the Google Analytics implementation was that there needs to be a clear understanding of what you want to achieve and how you want to achieve it before you start. Originally the analytics were added to track visitors, but as we became more savvy with the product, we began adding more and more functionality, and defining guidelines as we went along. While not detrimental to our success, this lack of an overarching goal resulted in some minor setbacks in implementation and the collection of some messy data that is unusable.
Our agency invests heavily in Google Ads (particularly paid search advertising) on behalf of our clients relative to competitors like Microsoft and Yahoo because Google is the top search engine in the world. Google collects the most search data which enables the company to improve its AI to drive better performance for agencies and brands. As such, our paid search and app install campaigns always start with Google. If a client has a large budget, we will allocate media dollars to other search engines, but in some cases, the entire search budget goes to Google because we see the best returns.
I have not used Adobe Analytics as much, but I know they offer something called customer journey analytics, which we are evaluating now. I have used Semrush, and I find them much better than Google Analytics. I feel a fairly nontechnical person could learn Semrush in about a month. They also offer features like competitive analysis (on content, keywords, traffic, etc.), which is very useful. If you have to choose one among Semrush and Google Analytics, I would say go for Semrush.
Google Analytics is currently handling the reporting and tracking of near about 80 sites in our project. And I am not talking about the sites from different projects. They may have way more accounts than that. Never ever felt a performance issue from Google's end while generating or customising reports or tracking custom events or creating custom dimensions
Google Ads is often one of our highest ROI channels, especially when you factor in branded ads.
Depending on the stage your business is in, search ads can be really powerful from an ROI perspective, providing an investment with a very high spend cap.
If you do not manage the campaigns well though, you can quickly spend a lot of money on nothing. So make sure someone is keeping an eye on your account.