Previous articles from bigmouthmedia have speculated about the future of web analytics. The web analytics landscape changed considerably with the introduction of Google Analytics a few years ago. Google Analytics started out as a user friendly analytics package that was robust enough for small to medium sized sites but didn't really have the capabilities to compete with more complex packages on larger corporate sites.Yahoo's purchase of IndexTools and recent launch of the package as Yahoo Analytics for free was expected to give expensive web analytics packages a run for their money. The major advantage that Yahoo's analytics package had over Google's was ease of segmentation, the ability to break down and analyse data in custom segments.
Yahoo is going through a long process of releasing IndexTools. Currently it's available to certain users but has not enjoyed a full public release. This delay may have cost it dear as Google released new segmentation capabilities among a whole host of new features in Google Analytics this week - meaning Google shares most of the same features as IndexTools and a few extra ones too.
Not for the first time, it looks as though Yahoo may have lost out to Google, who are generally much quicker on the ball. It now looks like Google is the obvious choice for websites looking to get more insight from their analytics. Not only is Google Analytics now more powerful, it is still much easier to use than IndexTools or more established (not to mention more expensive) analytics packages such as WebTrends and Omniture.
Setting up advanced segments on Google Analytics is a breeze and, even for the most analytically challenged, building custom reports or viewing data in new and innovative ways is easier than ever. If you still need to be convinced, consult Avinash Kaushik, Google's "analytics evangelist". His blog offers great ideas on using the new segmentation features.
It's possible that, with their strong client base and comprehensive features, some of the better, costlier packages will continue to do well in the analytics market. But it seems inevitable now, especially in these lean economic times, that some of the poorer but expensive packages may fall by the wayside.
Never one to rest on its laurels, Google has also just launched Google Analytics for Google Apps, which will give Google Apps administrators tools to monitor employee use of Google Docs and Google Sites. The application will provide visual representation of staff's use of the various Google sites, providing insight that's similar in nature to Google Analytics' current offering to webmasters with external sites. This will allow companies to monitor how their staff reacts to business decisions, view what resources staff are using and check on staff searches.
As with most of Google's new products and services, questions are likely to be asked as to whether the search engine is gaining too much access to information and what the long term consequences of this might be. Still, there is no doubting that the products it is providing are of the highest quality - and, better still, they're free.
