products I’ve worked with. I’m not usually one to predict impending doom, but I would imagine that the web analytics vendor space could be down to as little as 30 companies from about 120 next year. This is simply because there is very little need to use any paid tool at the lower end of the market when there is a fully featured one available for free.

What features?

Well, I could write an entire book. The sy

First they gave us a good search engine. Then they gave us two gigabytes of free server space for email. Now they have given us a high quality web analytics system, for free. Let me just repeat that. They have given us a web analytics system FOR FREE. So what’s this system like? What are its features and how do I see it affecting the web analytics marketplace? This article explains all.

The Web Analytics Marketplace

For a long time now the market has been split into the companies that could afford good tracking at the enterprise level, where the average yearly fee is about $40,000, and those that could only afford around $500-$5000 per year. I don’t see the companies marketing to the enterprises being affected too much.

Enterprise level companies have so many different needs, such as security of their information and high level support, that Googles offer, while probably tempting, will not be a viable solution. Google have slow support and I don’t see that being any different for their analytics solution. In fact I think Google will most likely rely on outside agencies to support the product. I also can’t see the big companies (especially the big publishers and advertising firms) happily handing over all their data to a company that either is or most likely will be their competition.

The companies who will really benefit are the ones that either use 3rd party tracking and pay a comparatively small fee per year or don’t currently use analytics at all. The vendors currently serving the SME sector had better get into the enterprise market. If they don’t they will be out of business within a year because the features of the Google system are as good as some enterprise products I’ve worked with. I’m not usually one to predict impending doom, but I would imagine that the web analytics vendor space could be down to as little as 30 companies from about 120 next year. This is simply because there is very little need to use any paid tool at the lower end of the market when there is a fully featured one available for free.

What features?

Well, I could write an entire book. The sy

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For a long time now the market has been split into the companies that could afford good tracking at the enterprise level, where the average yearly fee is about $40,000, and those that could only afford around $500-$5000 per year. I don’t see the companies marketing to the enterprises being affected too much.

Enterprise level companies have so many different needs, such as security of their information and high level support, that Googles offer, while probably tempting, will not be a viable solution. Google have slow support and I don’t see that being any different for their analytics solution. In fact I think Google will most likely rely on outside agencies to support the product. I also can’t see the big companies (especially the big publishers and advertising firms) happily handing over all their data to a company that either is or most likely will be their competition.

The companies who will really benefit are the ones that either use 3rd party tracking and pay a comparatively small fee per year or don’t currently use analytics at all. The vendors currently serving the SME sector had better get into the enterprise market. If they don’t they will be out of business within a year because the features of the Google system are as good as some enterprise products I’ve worked with. I’m not usually one to predict impending doom, but I would imagine that the web analytics vendor space could be down to as little as 30 companies from about 120 next year. This is simply because there is very little need to use any paid tool at the lower end of the market when there is a fully featured one available for free.

What features?

Well, I could write an entire book. The sy

el support, that Googles offer, while probably tempting, will not be a viable solution. Google have slow support and I don’t see that being any different for their analytics solution. In fact I think Google will most likely rely on outside agencies to support the product. I also can’t see the big companies (especially the big publishers and advertising firms) happily handing over all their data to a company that either is or most likely will be their competition.

The companies who will really benefit are the ones that either use 3rd party tracking and pay a comparatively small fee per year or don’t currently use analytics at all. The vendors currently serving the SME sector had better get into the enterprise market. If they don’t they will be out of business within a year because the features of the Google system are as good as some enterprise products I’ve worked with. I’m not usually one to predict impending doom, but I would imagine that the web analytics vendor space could be down to as little as 30 companies from about 120 next year. This is simply because there is very little need to use any paid tool at the lower end of the market when there is a fully featured one available for free.

What features?

Well, I could write an entire book. The sy

st likely will be their competition.

The companies who will really benefit are the ones that either use 3rd party tracking and pay a comparatively small fee per year or don’t currently use analytics at all. The vendors currently serving the SME sector had better get into the enterprise market. If they don’t they will be out of business within a year because the features of the Google system are as good as some enterprise products I’ve worked with. I’m not usually one to predict impending doom, but I would imagine that the web analytics vendor space could be down to as little as 30 companies from about 120 next year. This is simply because there is very little need to use any paid tool at the lower end of the market when there is a fully featured one available for free.

What features?

Well, I could write an entire book. The sy

products I’ve worked with. I’m not usually one to predict impending doom, but I would imagine that the web analytics vendor space could be down to as little as 30 companies from about 120 next year. This is simply because there is very little need to use any paid tool at the lower end of the market when there is a fully featured one available for free.

What features?

Well, I could write an entire book. The system has all the basics, the page views, the visitor counts, the path tracking, the technical info like browser/platform/resolutions, so pretty much everything you need to get the basic reporting done and dusted. However it’s also got what you need to get going with some decent analysis.

For instance you can track scenarios (i.e. figure out where people drop out of a shopping cart or sign up process). You can get demographic information such as what city and what company people are browsing from as well as a global overview to see instantly where most of your visits come from. You have a website overlay so that you may see what links people are clicking in a similar way to that pioneered by Clicktracks. You can cross match one statistic with another, so if you wanted to know how many people whom had visited only your landing page also bought a product or signed up you could find it out. You can find out the top entry pages, exit pages, bounce rates and really drill down into path analysis.

Perhaps most interesting though is the very comprehensive tracking you can do with PPC campaigns, as you would expect from Google. This alone was all I was expecting Google to give away when they acquired Urchin. I figured Google’s strategy in buying Urchin on demand (the system that Google Analytics used to be called) would be to scale down the features and concentrate on the PPC reporting for their customers, leaving the fully featured Urchin system as a separate product. But no, this is the full Urchin feature set, a product you used to pay at least $200 per month for. So is there anything here you should be wary or cautious about?

Beware the lawyers

There are some things abou