Why your Web Analytics in China and India may never be accurate

I am at Japan now. I don't agree with that statement. For your information, everyone here has one individual computer and we don't share or check out content together.

Dunno about the rest of Asia, but here in Singapore, we practice a 'one computer' policy.

Cities like Singapore, Hong Kong, KL, etc, probably don't fall into that observation. I wouldn't be surprised though that in some smaller towns and cities this might be true.

This is true for india.
A lot of internet usage in India happens through cyber cafes( Public internet centers).
One computer is used by 100's of users. This makes accessing the internet an outdoor event for a lot of people and results in multiple people using the same computer.

I'm Japanese and don't agree with it.

This is great, thanks for all the feedback. I'm happy to see so many readers from Japan.

If the comments progress, I'll update the title to reflect "China and India".

I don't live in India but I was born there. Kamla Bhatt's argument is somewhat true for the following reasons

1) There are still many families where several generations live together. Also, many children live with their parents even after they get job and get married. This kinda "family culture" ensures that the analytics software will not offer a correct picture.

2) Even though internet has spread reasonably in India, there are many people who still access the sites from Internet Cafes. Internet cafes are like a smaller level college library where people pay hourly charges to browse the web.

I would definitely agree with Kamla that anaytics software is of limited help when it comes to India.

This is a really interesting post, and a good point. I wonder if the same issue might arise in Africa, where connectivity comes at a premium. According to some speakers I've heard, the computers are more available but the cost of the Internet connection is very high, which leads to a different mode of usage in general.

Another thing to consider in conjunction with this issue is whether the visitors from India, rural China, and rural Africa are using a wireless device or a laptop. I would expect that wireless devices would more commonly be "one person" visits while regular web browsers would have a higher incidence of "multiple person" visits. However, I can't really think of any good way to study this except through observation-based research.

With the impending arrival of the $100 laptop in developing countries, would this improve or worsen the ambiguity of the number of visitors each visit actually represents?

Very interesting post Jeremiah. I work in US now but grew up in Korea so I'd like to voice my opinion.

In case of Korea, for the e-commerce purpose, usually one person use one computer. Older generations might share computer with their kids for the simple usage such as browsing news sites but they are not much engaged with e-commerce. There are strong presence of Internet cafes but they are usually occupied by hard-core gamers.

Therefore I believe Web Analytics effort in Korea will be worthwhile at least for e-commerce purpose.

Hope this helps!
Jonghee

Jonghee, thanks for dropping by, this is very helpful.

Andrea, thanks. I'm not sure how the one laptop per child will impact usage. What's the distribution method?

I'm sure any new technology will be sure to draw the eyeballs of many on to one screen.

Jeremiah!
interesting post,Iam a web analytic analyst by profession based out in INDIA, I probably partly believe those views. One of the reason is the "drastic" change in INDIA economy and falling price of computers had made it easy for a common man to buy a computer and internet is usually available everywhere now

Having worked (freelance) for couple of projects (region specific sites)we have had great insights using analytics software (GA). I certainly believe that they SURE do help and cannot be ignored as not accurate.

I am from China. I agree that there are occasions when a group of people use 1 computer, but I think it happens everywhere. Even in western countries, you might also have the chance of demonstrating a website to a few friends with your computer/laptop.

The latest CNNIC report (dated Jan 07) on Chinese Internet usage showed that 76% Chinese web users access into Internet from home and 33% from office. Only 12% is from schools/universities where shared computer may happen.

Cynthia,

can you provide me a link to that report? That's very helpful.

Linking difficulty in measurements and the community browsing habit (???)seems to be amusing. It appears as though people seem to have the notion - wherever there is a computer in India, there are 5-10 browsers sitting around and exhibiting a common(average)behavior.

IMHO, it depends on what you are measuring and how. Even if there is one computer per family (so-called joint family as someone said), individual tastes do differ (My grandpa would not visit online pop music stores as I do).

This notion, probably is based on the wrong premise that per capita desktop number is less while the number of users are more.

Showing interesting stuff to people around you happens in other (developed)countries too. Are office desktops not shared in those countries?

I do agree that west is far more individualistic compared to east. That does not mean that measurements are inaccurate because of that.

So,again it depends on what you are trying to measure and how. Sweeping statements like this are hard to accept.

> interesting post,Iam a web analytic analyst by profession based out in INDIA, I probably partly believe those views. One of the reason is the “drastic” change in INDIA economy and falling price of computers had made it easy for a common man to buy a computer and internet is usually available everywhere now

If the 'common man' belongs to the 10 percent richest of india then I agree. But this is NOT common AT ALL to have a computer + internet in india. But its changing,

Here in China that may have been true up to five years ago but now especially in bigger cities that is far from the reality. Although many people still go to internet cafes, they are there mostly for gaming and not for anything that would be interesting from an analytics point of view such as web browsing or so on. In offices people have their own computers and even at home there are many computers, laptops becoming very popular in recent years.
So I don't think there is any real difference compared to the West.

yes it is goopd site for users who are usinging ing the smsseva people

we are a SEO company and working since 2005. I am not very much sure about it.

May be you are right but I never found this kind of dissimilarities.

Anyways you started a good topic, I'll think over it and will comeback here with some details.

I also would like to announce here, we have become a Google Analytics and Google Adwords Qualified Individual Company.
It really a great motivation for us and our expert team. we are pretty sure that it will build confidence i our new and existing customers.

We are still upgrading work process to deliver the best to our clients.

Thanking you.
organic seo company india