Free Google Analytics
Since a big part of marketing online depends on understanding what your customer is doing on your Web site, I am pleased to see that Google has decided to offer the Urchin Analytics hosted service free of charge.
In what seems to be a bid to further control online advertising revenues, Google has tightly integrated the new Google Analytics with its pay-per-click arms, Adwords & Adsense.
Now the reality check. I went to the Google Analytics Web site to sign up and begin registering my clients for more advanced reporting tools (Who wouldn’t want that?). What I found instead of a registration area was a form soliciting my name and email address.
I am now officially on a waiting list for free analytics.
But how long is this free analytics waiting list? Analytics and Adwords are tightly integrated. I am guessing that the companies with the most revenue generation in the Adwords/Adsense program are being offered analytics first.
In the final analysis, this means that the rest of us may have to wait a long time.
December 5th, 2005
