Ready for a shocker? No, not that kind of shocker you pervert (Greg). The shocker that I'm referring to is the one that leads a person to disbelief and is usually attributed to hearing or discovering something that is completely unexpected. Ready? Alright, brace yourself. Chances are... the website analytics that you've come to know and love - you know, the one tool that you count on most to help with making those very tough marketing decisions - is probably faulty, or at least in some way miscuing it's numbers. Scary thought, isn't it.

Did you know that most analytics programs currently offer what is referred to as the "last-touch" method to tracking - meaning that whichever marketing channel "tags" the visitor last before he or she makes a purchase is ultimately going to get full credit for that sale? That's a problem, and a huge one at that.

For instance, let's say that a person, wishing to research the differences between several brand-name MP3 players, had placed a search on Google for the term "mp3 players". This person stumbles across your highly ranked organic listing, clicks through, reviews your products and pricing, and then moves on to yet another store for additional research. After a week of researching website after website, the person decides to purchase an 8GB Apple iPod Touch from your store - and why not... your products are competitively priced, right? There is only one problem... the buyer had forgotten the exact spelling of your web address, and so in order to re-find your store he or she placed a search on Yahoo! for your company's name. The buyer sees your paid ad, clicks through, and buys an iPod.

Under this scenario, any analytics program using the "last-touch" method for tracking conversions has just awarded 100% of the sale to your Yahoo! PPC campaign, while it's quite obvious that your Google SEO campaign is well deserving of some, if not all, credit. If this happened once or twice a month, this would be no big deal. However, imagine a scenario where this is happening with 20%-30% of your monthly orders and across multiple marketing channels - Yahoo! PPC stealing ROI from Google SEO, Google SEO stealing from MSN PPC, Yahoo! SEO steals from email marketing mailings, and on and on. What a mess that would be. The problem is... its most likely happening to you right now.

In fact, this happens everywhere... even in sports. Consider this, when a basketball player steals the ball and then passes it up-court to an open player, and that player dunks it, who does ESPN credit? The scorer. In baseball, when a pitcher throws a "no-hitter" he gets the credit. The credit is not awarded to the third baseman for his incredible defensive play or even the center fielder for lying out to make a grab. It's awarded to the pitcher.

Now I won't go on record and reveal which analytics programs do this, nor the ones I've tested - that isn't what this post is about. However, if you're currently using or researching analytics programs then I would certainly encourage you inquire about that company's cookie settings, specifically if they employ the "last-touch" method of tracking.

As a person who is responsible for the well-being of several online marketing campaigns, I can't afford to be making decisions (i.e. increasing or decreasing PPC bids, adjusting email marketing offers, or tweaking highly ranked pages on a website) based on faulty data. And, neither can you.