Google to improve free blog/website stats tracking
Expect Google to dress up its Google Analytics, a free web stats tracking package for blogs and websites, with Google's acquisition of Gapminder’s Trendalyzer.
Gapminder’s Trendalyzer is described as software that ‘unveils the beauty of statistics by converting boring numbers into enjoyable interactive animations.’
Google Blogoscoped, my source for this post, reports:
...[D]evelopers ‘have left Gapminder to join Google in Mountain View, where Google intends to improve and scale up Trendalyzer, and make it freely available to those who seek access to statistics,’ Stockholm-based Gapminder says, and Google adds that Trendalyzer ‘will improve any function or application in which data might be better visualized.’
LexBlog provides its clients, at no cost, Mint, a stats analytics program whose dashboard interface provides a clean look at visits, referrers, popular pages and searches. We will install Google Analytics if desired.
Unless you're selling products via your blog or running an elaborate sponsored links campaign stats on top of stats are not worthwhile. Give me a quick easy look at something I can understand.
Plus I've never had a client that contacted LexBlog to get stats. The measurement of blog success is growth in business.
But for those folks using Google Analytics it looks like the stats will become be easier to read in the coming months.
Kevin:
Isn't Google Analytics the same program as Urchin? If so, there were some features Urchin provided that Mint is missing. As a marketing director, I work with statistics and need clear reports in formats that I can submit. Mint is cumbersome, and there is no place where monthly data, trends, competitive intelligence is aggregated. I can only see what happened in a week's snapshot and then the data is gone. I can't go back and look at last month (with the exception of the total number of visitors and who is new). If Google Analytics is free and improved, I would like to have it.
Yep, Google bought Urchin and it's now Google Analytics. We'll get it installed for you this week and drop you a note.
Don't agree that Mint is cumbersome and doesn't show history beyond a week. I run an Internet marketing company and publish a popular blog and find Mint much more hepful than Google Analytics.
Some folks just prefer one over the other.
Google also purchased MeasureMap from AdaptivePath last year and we have yet to see how that integration will be. I assume that with MeasureMap and now Gapminder's Trendalyzer that blog stats will improve. Though the one real thing that almost all stat packages miss so far is RSS stats. That's where FeedBurner still takes the cake and with their acquisition of BlogBeat, they will compete pretty well soon.