Google Analytics

Google has launched a stat tracking program called Google Analytics. It is based off of an aquisition of Urchin Software they made in March, 2005:

Google Inc. said late Monday it has agreed to acquire Urchin Software Corp., which makes software to help companies analyze the traffic at their Web sites.

There is both excitement and leery takes on this from the webmaster community. The service is free, though if you have more than 5 million page views a month you'll have to signup for Google AdWords as well.

Google Analytics tells you everything you want to know about how your visitors found you and how they interact with your site.

I haven't tried it yet, mainly because most webmasters are reporting slow service with the flooding I'm sure Google is getting hammered with. Another reason is that this allows Google to see where your visitors came from, what link they clicked on to leave your site and other things that I feel Google could directly tie into the other services they provide, such as AdSense and AdWords. I'm not sure this is a bad thing, but something is telling me this could have a negative impact.

Eric Giguere of An AdSense Blog is excited about it.

The great thing about this is that even bloggers whose blogs are hosted on sites they don't control -- like the blogspot.com domain -- can use this service. This is a great way to get some good data on what people are doing on your site.

Terry of Affiliate Marketing Gab asks what's in it for her:

Google will be able to see who’s sending me traffic and what that traffic is doing. What keywords are being used from other search engine traffic? Do my visitors dump and run? Or do they hang around, flip through a few pages, make a bookmark or two? How do they leave my site? Through an internal link? Which internal link? Or do they leave through the back button (not finding what they want on my site)? What was the offsite page that sent traffic to me about? What did those visitors do, how did they respond? What are they buying? What are they ignoring?

My first reaction is: Sheeyah Right Too Nosey Goog - Nice Try But No Cookie For You

...

If Google wants perks - I better get some darn good perks in return

Terry's going to try it on some sites she owns though and see if it helps in her search engine placement since she receives a lot of traffic from bookmarks that google doesn't even know about. She does note that Google's privacy policy allows sharing of your stats! So who will they be sharing all these stats with and will this affect your revenue?

SEOBook notes how Google could use this to discount your revenue.

Even if they only use your data in aggregate, if you are exceptionally profitable on some terms those keywords could be suggested more frequently to competitors (to help raise those keywords to near fair market value), and the smart pricing would discount less on content that your site proves converts.

WorkBoxers questions the stat delays and whether it's worth it if the stats aren't real time.

If the system does stat tracking like Adsense with delayed reporting then there really is no point in using the system other than the integration with Adwords. I will revisit the system later today once stats have been uploaded and report back.

Search Engine Journal

Just how far will Google go to enhance the conversions of their AdWords advertisers? I’ll go out on a limb to predict that Google will expand their Analytics platform in the future to dynamically enhance sites, cross selling, shopping carts, and conversion pages to lead to higher sales conversions. Heck, they already have some patents which point to such developments.

Question is however, do businesses really want Google knowing all about their sales and conversion process, and to what extent?

This will, in the end, have a huge impact upon Google's advertising programs, there is no doubt about that.

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