Back in March Google purchased one of the oldest analytics tools, Urchin. This past Monday, we got our first look at the supercharged Urchin system not so cleverly renamed Google Analytics.

After it being up nearly a week, I finally got the chance to put Google Analytics through the paces. So far, so good. Comparing it to the in-house analytics of agencies, including USWeb, Google Analytics comes out on top. And no one can argue with a price tag that can’t be beat with a five finger discount.

The question most people are wondering is how will this affect the top shelf systems like Omniture or Core Metrics? My opinion is that these systems are superior, but not the $25k - $75k superior they need to be to beat Google Analytics. How they do offer a few useful features, so does Google Analytics. How the Omniture “hot sheet” is a very cool feature, massive integration with AdWords and AdSense has a more real world value. And Google has a little less impressive version of the “hot sheet”.

Google’s pricing offer of…free is great, but it only goes up to 5 million page views. After that, you need to be an AdSense partner. This is a great idea to get the big publishers on board with AdSense. Without a comparable offering, Yahoo could lose some ground with SiteMatch. But Yahoo losing ground to Google is not a new thing.

So should everyone spend the weekend swapping pixels? That really depends on your business…and how much you want Google to know about it. In the past year we have seen Google decide that if it can’t be all things to all people, it can be most things to most people. Do you have a site that sells watches, then maybe there is no problem with Google knowing your info…hopefully. What I would not suggest are companies like Cars.Com, Orbitz or Shopping.Com. These sites are really nothing but search engines, even if they are restricted to autos, airfare and products. Putting Google Analytics on your site is the same exact thing as handing them your log files. If you are not the least bit worried about Google entering your business, then their offer is very compelling.

Would these companies really be in jeopardy handing out this data? This about that Google tracking on your site already for conversion tracking. Think about all the data Google has on which terms convert, which type of creative copy works, and even how positioning impacts conversion. As a search marketing firm, USWeb brings to the table years of experience in monitoring campaigns. When companies hire us, they benefit from those years and are almost always successful. There is not a lot of surprises for us anymore in the search space. Imagine what Google knows.

That being said, the product itself is pretty good for most of you normal needs. You can track conversions of paid campaigns, as well as organic search traffic. There are some very nifty tools in DHTML and Flash (I love the geographic map). Data can be exported through CSV or XML, which screams out third party tools. The interface is clean and easy to learn.

On the downside, I ran across some bugs. I’ll give you a hint to what OS got left stranded again by Google… I could not use the system on Safari. I switch to Firefox on OS X and seemed to have an easier time of it, but I haven’t tried everything yet.

Overall, Google Analytics is something most site should take advantage of. Just remember, Google is the new Microsoft, and Big Brother is watching.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, November 8th, 2006 at 10:47 amand is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.