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What Is Web Analytics & What Are Its Limits

  • 8:49 am
Estimated reading time: 7 minutes

Table Of Contents

Introduction

Web analytics is the practice of collecting, measuring, and interpreting data about how people find, use, and interact with a website. It helps you move beyond assumptions and make informed decisions about content, design, marketing, and user experience. By analysing real behaviour, web analytics can show what’s working, what isn’t, and where to focus your time and investment.
This article introduces four commonly used web analytics tools:
  • Google Keyword Planner – A research tool designed to help you understand what people are searching for in Google
  • Google Search Console – Shows how your website performs in Google’s search results and how Google views your site from a technical perspective
  • Google Analytics 4 – tracks what users do once they arrive on your website
  • Hotjar – Helps to visualise interaction behaviour and identify usability issues
Together, they give a clear picture of search demand, website performance, and user behaviour.

1. Google Keyword Planner

Google Keyword Planner is a research tool designed to help you understand what people are searching for in Google. While it is primarily built for advertisers, it is also widely used for Search engine optimisation and content planning.

Key metrics

  • Average monthly searches – how often a keyword is searched
  • Competition level – how competitive the keyword is among advertisers
  • Top of page bid (low and high range) – an indicator of commercial intent
  • Keyword variations – related terms and alternative search phrases

How To Use The Data

You can use this tool to help you pick keywords that your audience actively searches for. Focussing on keywords that are not dominated by large, authoritative websites is important. Your page titles, headings, content, and internal links should be based on the selected keyword. This helps search engines understand the page and match it to relevant searches. Over time, this brings more qualified organic traffic from users who are already looking for that information or solution.

2. Google Search Console (GSC)

Google Search Console shows how your website performs in Google’s search results and how Google views your site from a technical perspective. It focuses on visibility, indexing, and search performance rather than on-site behaviour.

Key metrics

  • Clicks – the number of users who click through from search
  • Impressions – how often your pages appear in search results
  • Average position – where your pages typically rank for queries
  • Click through rate (CTR) – the percentage of impressions that result in clicks

How To Use The Data

You can use this data to identify pages with high impressions but low clicks (click through rate), as these represent missed traffic opportunities. Next look for pages of yours that are almost on page one, where targeted user experience & content improvements can deliver noticeable gains. Over time, Google Search Console data helps guide decisions about content updates, technical fixes, internal linking, and search intent alignment.
Rather than chasing rankings alone, Google Search Console encourages a focus on visibility, relevance, and user choice, helping you improve not just where a page appears, but whether users actually select it.

3. Google Analytics 4 (GA4)

Google Analytics 4 tracks what users do once they arrive on your website. It uses an event based model to measure interactions across pages, devices, and platforms.

Key metrics

  • Users and new users – how many people visit your site
  • Engagement time – how long users actively interact with content
  • Engaged sessions – sessions that involve meaningful interaction
  • Events – actions such as clicks, form submissions, and downloads
  • Conversions – key actions defined as business goals

How To Use The Data

Pages with high traffic (users and new users) but low engagement time or conversion rates are often prioritised for improvement. This shows that users are not interracting with your content. GA4 data also helps you analyse and compare performance across devices, channels, and user segments, guiding decisions about layout, content strategy, and technical optimisation.
Over time, GA4 supports a cycle of measurement, testing, and refinement, helping teams make evidence-based improvements that increase usability, engagement, and business impact rather than simply driving more traffic.

4. Hotjar

Hotjar provides qualitative insight into how users experience your website. Rather than focusing purely on numbers, it helps visualise behaviour and identify usability issues.

Key Data

  • Heatmaps – where users click, scroll, and focus their attention
  • Session recordings – real user journeys through your site
  • Scroll depth – how far users scroll down a page
  • On-site feedback – insights from polls and surveys

How To Use The Data

Hotjar data helps turn user behaviour into clear, actionable improvements by showing *how* people actually experience a website. Heatmaps and scroll depth reveal whether important content and calls to action are being seen or ignored, while session recordings expose friction points such as hesitation, repeated clicks, or confusing navigation. On-site feedback adds direct user context, helping explain frustrations or unmet expectations that numbers alone can’t capture. Together, these insights allow teams to refine layouts, improve content placement, simplify user journeys, and prioritise changes that remove obstacles and make the website easier and more intuitive to use.

5. How These Tools Work Together

Each of these tools answers a different question. Google Keyword Planner shows what people are searching for, Search Console explains how your site performs in search results, GA4 reveals what users do on your site, and Hotjar shows how they experience it.
Used together, they provide a complete view of demand, performance, behaviour, and usability. This makes it easier to prioritise improvements, validate decisions with data, and reduce guesswork.

6. Limits Of Web Analytics

While web analytics tools are extremely useful, they also have clear limitations. They can show what people are doing what they search for, which pages they visit, and how they interact with a site, but they rarely explain why that behaviour happened in the first place. For example, a sudden spike in branded searches or traffic might be triggered by external factors such as TV coverage, a podcast appearance, a press article, or word of mouth, none of which these tools can directly attribute or explain. You can look at Google Trends to find out what people are searching and how many people searched it. Analytical tools don’t account for broader public relations or brand activity happening outside the website. This is where analytics should be viewed as part of a wider measurement approach rather than a complete picture. Using frameworks like the PESO model (Paid, Earned, Shared, Owned), these tools become valuable for measuring how owned channels respond to wider PR efforts, helping you assess impact and momentum, even if they can’t fully explain the original cause of demand.

Final Thoughts

Web analytics is most powerful when it is used as a guide rather than a scoreboard. Tools like Google Keyword Planner, Google Search Console, GA4, and Hotjar each reveal a different part of the picture, from search demand and visibility to on-site behaviour and user experience. When combined, they help reduce guesswork, prioritise improvements, and support better digital decisions based on real evidence.
At the same time, analytics has limits. It can show what is happening on your website, but it cannot fully explain the external forces that shape demand, awareness, and intent. This is why analytics works best when it is viewed alongside wider marketing and communications activity, not in isolation.

If you’re new to web analytics, start small. Focus on a handful of meaningful metrics, review them regularly, and link insights back to clear actions. Over time, analytics becomes less about dashboards and reports, and more about understanding your users, helping you build a website that is clearer, more usable, and more effective at supporting your goals.

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