Consumer reaction to Google's new site-metrics tool is going to be: "Wow! Awesome!" Long-time advertisers in AdWords will have a more jaded response: "Dude, finally." Early adopters of AdWords suffered through having no analytic tool, then a little conversion-measuring gadget was added to the control panel. That single column in the campaign statistics was one-dimensional and difficult to understand for many people. Google Analytics appears to leapfrog ahead to a complete traffic analysis solution: "We've designed Google Analytics to have enterprise level capabilities and yet still be accessible to anyone who wants to improve their marketing and site design. Google Analytics delivers all the features you'd expect from a high-end web analytics offering, and provides timesaving AdWords integration features." A full review must wait until the roll-out is complete; very slow service prevails as of the time of this entry. You might get this message: "We are currently migrating existing customers to the newly improved Google Analytics service." More later on what could be a powerful Google incursion into yet another industry: Web traffic analytics.
Google Eases Analytics Off the Dock
Reader Comments
(Page 1)2. Hmm... looks like they're off to a fairly rough start, and a few previous Urchin customers are a tad peeved about it. It'll get ironed out, to be sure, but I'm still not quite sure what I get for this above and beyond what I can normally collect through my logs and doing my own tracking.
Still, it looks pretty.
3. It'll probably put most other statistics companies out of business. 99% of people won't pay for a product when they can use a freebie off someone as established as Google.
Posted at 4:42AM on Dec 19th 2005 by SEO articles
4. I've signed up, but its taking ages (24hours+ so far) for my reports to be generated. The site was also very slow while signing up yesterday...
Posted at 4:42AM on Dec 19th 2005 by Andrew Allen
5. From Google blog: "Google Analytics tells you everything you want to know about how your visitors found you and how they interact with your site. You'll be able to focus your marketing resources on campaigns and initiatives that deliver ROI, and improve your site to convert more visitors."
This was about a year ago that Google acquired Urchin. By then Urchin used to be the only tool that could provide the same analytics as any other expensive web analytical tool but yet was really reasonable. You could not only track your Adwords campaign but also import other PPC engine data and etc. But what happened? They got bought and lost. Since Google bought them the tool is not improved but actually downgraded. Here is the email string that I had with Urchin Support (or should I say Google support):
Thank you for your email. I have attached your current master tracking
table
for the profile www.com.
Please let me know if you have any additional questions about this
topic.
You can also visit our help center at http://help.urchin.com/
Sincerely,
Urchin Support
----
Here are the new master tracking codes for that profile. Please update
them
as soon as possible so our reporting is correct.
Thanks,
-------
Thank you for your email. Unfortunately, due to the recent upgrades to
Google Analytics, we are unable to make any configuration changes at
this
time. This includes adding master tracking tables to any profiles. I
apologize for any inconvenience this may cause. We expect this
functionality to be available in the near future and appreciate your
patience in the meantime. I will follow-up with you once I am able to
apply this table for you.
For additional questions, please visit the Analytics Help Center at
http://www.google.com/support/analytics. If you're unable to find an
answer to your question on our site, please feel free to reply to this
email.
Sincerely,
Analytics Support
Posted at 4:42AM on Dec 19th 2005 by Vural Cifci
7. Quite frankly this release of "free" web analytics just dropped a serious bomb on an industry.
In a single day Google just said that a 500million dollar annual industry is in fact worth nothing. Google Analytics is a fair product, as I've watched Urchin themselves over the past few years. I wouldn't say it's great, and I've noticed some minor features missing from gAnalytics (namely email exports).....but the darn thing is FREE! I didn't mind that google bought urchin before, because they were still charging money for it....now there is no way anyone to compete except for the really high end, customized companies (like Omniture).
I unfortunately worked in the web analytics industry until this anouncement, so I do actually feel betrayed by a company we pay advertising costs to, to come along and pull our undies over our head and punch us in the nose. I expect I wasn't the first to go, and deffinately not the last.....google's just going to strangle everyone out of the market because they control the primary marketing tool on the industry, and then once they have a controlable near monopoly, jack the price.
that's life i guess.
anyone got a C/C++ programming position open out there?
Posted at 4:42AM on Dec 19th 2005 by Out of work
8. I installed it out of curiosity on one of the sites I own more than a day and a half ago. And it was saying that my reports will be ready in 12 hours. Well... At this moment it still says it's waiting for data. I don't really like to be misinformed even if it's Google. Hehe.
9. Finally, after a long wait the first stats are showing up in my Google Analytics dashboard. I am really impressed!
For years I have been using those free webcounters like Nedstat, but this is something completely different, much more detailed information.
I am afraid of becoming a 'Stats Junkie'!
11. I currently use Nettracker Lite to analyse my log files offline. At the end of each day, I like to download all my log files, run the update process and analyze my referrers for the day before going to sleep.
With the reported 24 hour Google Analytics reporting delay, I won't be able to do this anymore. Whereas, with Statcounter I could see the results in real-time and the only problem was the storage limit.
One other issue is that with Google Analytics, the code is loaded at the top of your page, which means that any user that can't access the google network for one reason or the other won't be able to view my page at all. Whenever they are down, I will be down.
Now that's terrible, and would you believe that it happened to be a few hours after excitedly adding the code?
Well, if Google is trying to kill or dominate the web analytics industry, they are going to have to do much better! Why can't they use the Adsense code to implement Analytics and save us some page loading time?
Posted at 4:42AM on Dec 19th 2005 by Seun Osewa
1. Google is going to completely dominate this field in terms of new web analytics customers, unless Yahoo or Microsoft buys Webtrends or another web analytics company. I think they'll also make a dent in "switchers" from other services.
Google Analytics is Urchin On-Demand, just rebranded, with all ecommerce and conversion tracking.
Amazing.
Posted at 4:42AM on Dec 19th 2005 by doug