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Google Buys Urchin Web Analytics

Posted by Zonk on from the another-feather-in-their-cap dept.

sho222 writes "Business Week, BMP Today, and others are reporting that Google agreed late Monday to aqcuire Urchin Software Corporation. Urchin boasts that their web analytics and marketing intelligence software is used by millions of sites worldwide and 20% of Fortune 500 companies. Google's VP of Product Management explains that, "This technology will be a valuable addition to Google's suite of advertising and publishing products." The deal is set to close in late April."

4 of 112 comments (clear)

  1. Re:This is pretty exciting. by lucabrasi999 · · Score: 4, Informative
    In addition to being the penultimate search engine

    Google is the next to last search engine?

  2. Not all that significant by bradleyland · · Score: 3, Informative

    I'd venture that if you look at the bot referrer log for most sites, Googlebot is at or near the top most of the time. That's just a simple screenshot reflecting what's likely in a production environment.

  3. Re:Will they do something about the bloat? by gb506 · · Score: 4, Informative
    My mileage does indeed vary. I bought Urchin 5.x.x last week after doing a competitive analysis of the top contenders in the web analytics market. Urchin beat them all hands down in ver. 5 form, and version 6, which is in operation now as an on-demand service, will be out in software form in the next couple of months. The page overlay functions and goal tracking in 6 are the bee's knees and I cannot wait to use it.

    And you talk about bloat? WebTrends 7 is a 245MB download. The entire Urchin install directory (for OSX) is 15MB decompressed. Hardly bloatware.

  4. Bad news for Search Optimizers? by miller60 · · Score: 3, Informative

    Google seems likely to make its Urchin-based tools available for free to its AdSense publishers and AdWords clients. Google's interest is in making ads more relevant, which in turn allows to to charge more for ads. That won't be happy news for search engine optimization (SEO) specialists who help site owners improve their visibility. If Google is offering user-friendly traffic analysis tools, are site owners likely to pay SEO firms? Some will, but this will make do-it-yourself search optimization much easier.

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    RichM
    Data Center Knowledge