Google Analytics — An updated version of Google’s Web site analysis service, graduated from beta recently with several new features added to help site administrator’s measure traffic.
Google Analytics began life as Urchin On Demand, a hosted Web analytics service offered by San Diego-based Urchin Software Corp. Google acquired Urchin in March 2005 and initially offered the Web traffic measurement service for $199.
In November 2005, Google re-branded the service Google Analytics and began offering it for free.
“Ever since releasing the new Google Analytics, we have received repeated requests for specific features,” wrote the Analytics team’s Alden DeSoto.
“We strongly felt that these features deserved to be incorporated into the product immediately so, as of today, everyone has access to the most requested improvements.”
New Features:
New features include the ability to view reports on website traffic by hour, a feature from the old version that did not make it into the recent interface upgrade.
Apart from hourly reporting attribute, some of the new Google Analytics features include:
- Clickable URLs: We have added the ability to click on external links in certain reports and navigate straight to those pages. These external outbound links are available in the Referring Sites, Top Content, Top Landing Pages, and Top Exit Pages reports.
- Adwords Integration: It is now easier to add an AdWords account to an existing Google Analytics account.
- Report Linking Issue Fixed: Reports that are newly added to the dashboard now have their data properly linked to their more detailed versions.
- Bounce Rate Issue Fixed: Bounce rates measurements have had their colors changed for visual consistency. A decrease in bounce rate is now colored green to match other positive changes, while an increase in bounce rate is colored red like other negative changes.
- More Data Viewable Promptly: We have increased the maximum number of table rows per page from 100 to 500 rows.
- Smoother Registration: Some countries have been added to the list menu in Step 2 of the Account Activation process. The list is now consistent with available country choices in AdWords.
- Added Support: We have added more Help resources to the Email Reports interface.
DeSoto added that Analytics also now identifies referrals from the AOL.fr, Club-Internet.fr, Voila.fr and Mama.com search engines.
Google had to shut down beta sign-ups just days after it made the re-branded Urchin software available in 2005 due to embarrassingly slow performance. But the company re-launched the site last month using design experience from its MeasureMap acquisition to make reports much easier to interrogate.
Earlier this month, Google acquired content syndication and management service FeedBurner, which offers similar traffic analytics for RSS feeds. Google has yet to say how or whether FeedBurner will be integrated with Google Analytics.