Google Inc. plans to give away a set of analytic tools allowing Web developers, administrators and advertisers to fine-tune their sites including advertising, the Web search leader said in a statement.
The free hosted service, which will be available in English and 16 other languages, is based on technology from San Diego-based Urchin, which Google acquired in March.
Urchin’s products previously cost US$495 a month and were reduced to US$199 a month by Google. The full-featured analytics applications based on Urchin’s technology replace the simple tracking tool that is now available with Google AdWords.
The tools are intended to address a key aspect of successful Web sites, which is the ability to track user behavior to determine which features keep visitors on the site and which ones make them click away.
Google Analytics can be used by Web site builders to figure out what keywords attract visitors, which promotions hold on to customers and how to design Web pages that draw attention.
Google Analytics will let Web site owners see exactly where visitors to their site are coming from, what links on the site are getting the most traffic, what pages visitors are viewing, how long people stay on the site, which products on merchant sites are being sold and where people give up in multi-step checkout processes, said Paul Muret, an engineering director at Google and one of the founders of Urchin.
Google Analytics will be integrated with Google AdWords and will offer a new interface within existing AdWords accounts. Marketers can also use it to track banner, e-mail, non-paid and paid search advertising campaigns from other ad service providers.
Google Analytics also includes a feature that automatically imports the cost data for return on investment reports into the Google Analytics program so advertisers can see how much they are paying for keywords compared with how much money they are making off them, Muret said.
Google, which derived virtually all of its $1.58 billion in revenue from advertising sales during the last quarter, is betting that by giving away sophisticated Web measurement tools it can also drive increased use of its search marketing services.
Any time we add more measurability and more control, advertisers understand more of what they are doing and they end up spending more, said Muret.
Google Analytics http://www.google.com/analytics/ is already used by many top Web sites, including dozens of Fortune 500 companies. By making the service free, Google is seeking to draw a wider range of users to Web analytics, including individuals looking to more actively promote their topical Web logs, or blogs.
There are three summary views, for executives, Web masters and marketing officials.
Though in theory people who are using Google Analytics and competitive services to monitor their ad campaigns could be exposing information to Google on how those rival services work, Muret said Google would not get any competitive advantage from that.
We have very strict controls on the data. It is only used to provide reporting to customers and people using the analytics, he said.
This has the potential to be a pretty big deal, Eric Peterson, a senior analyst at Jupiter Research, said of the news. They made the acquisition earlier this year and are trying to think of good ways to take advantage of it. It is probably a no-brainer.
Google Analytics could hurt companies like Web Trends, Web Side Story and Click Tracks, and others focusing on the small to medium-size business market, Peterson said. It will hurt the low-end focusing on the SMB market, he said.
Microsoft includes analytics in its AdCenter keyword ad campaign tool, which will compete with Google AdWords. AdCenter, in beta testing in Singapore and France, differs in that it provides targeted information about the Web surfers to whom it serves ads, including data like age, gender and ZIP code.
FREE SOFTWARE
While most Web creation programs offer rudimentary site tracking tools, a more sophisticated set of costly tools are offered by companies such as WebSideStory, SPSS Inc. and CoreMetrics.
Advertisers using Google AdWords, its popular pay-per-click keyword-selling service, will find Google Analytics embedded in their accounts. This will help marketers using AdWords to automatically drive traffic to relevant pages on their sites.
EBay Inc. introduced a subscription analytics service lately to allow buyers and sellers to search pricing trends on eBay. Microsoft Corp. is testing its own search advertising tool, known as AdCenter, which also offers users a set of site analytics to optimize marketing efforts.
Once marketers understand what they are spending money on, they are basically budget-unlimited, as long as revenues remain marginally positive, Muret said.
Google is not alone in seeking to open up more Web data to customers in order to encourage them to buy more services.