Google Buys Urchin Web Analytics

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."

Comments

Google's already been there.

[digitalgimpus]

I found this image on the website here.

Google had a decent stake for a while ;-)

Re:ok then

[lucabrasi999]

How about vivisimo? The name sucks, but the tool is great.

This is pretty exciting.

[Sheetrock]

In addition to being the penultimate search engine, Google is becoming quite feature-rich as well. It's pretty interesting to realize the subtle way in which they've risen to the top by simply providing what people want -- no more, no less -- in this age when we are saturated with online advertising on every other Internet site.

So cheers to Google.

Re:This is pretty exciting.

[AKAImBatman]

In addition to being the penultimate search engine

What is the ultimate search engine?

(If I get a Hitchhicker's Guide answer, I'm going to strangle someone.) ;-)

Re:This is pretty exciting.

[lucabrasi999]

In addition to being the penultimate search engine

Google is the next to last search engine?

Re:This is pretty exciting.

[morten poulsen]

Earth?

Re:This is pretty exciting.

[AKAImBatman]

LOL! Close, very close. :-)

The answer is, "The search engine that comes after Google." Which, if you think about it, makes for a really annoying reason to use the word "penultimate". :-)

Politics makes strange bedfellows...

[tquinlan]

...but capitalism makes excellent ones.

This is an excellent match. It makes perfect sense that a web advertising company would buy a web analytics company, and I can't wait to see the results show up in AdSense.

i hope

[eobanb]

I just hope that Google stays consumer and user-oriented instead of investing more time in arcane fields like traffic analysis, or the route IBM has gone, "e-solutions." This seems like a step in the wrong direction; it's not like Google is seeking to be recognised among high-profile companies....Google, isn't it time to start writing end-user software?

Re:i hope

[mboos]

I was actually taken back by how much Google employees will stand by the principle of meeting end-user needs.

At a information session for Google at our university, they showed us how they could make graphs of frequency statistics for certain search words. Sort of the stuff you'd find in the Google Zeitgeist but as a graph for a particular word over time. For example, they showed a graph for a search on 'Summer Olympics' which spiked during the most recent Winter Olympics.

I asked them if Google had ever considered selling some of these statistics to businesses trying to analyze trends, just in bulk numbers (no privacy violations etc). I would figure it would be easy for them to implement, and another source of revenue. The presenters (who were actual engineers for Google, not just some PR folks) frowned upon that idea because they claimed that "it would not directly benefit end users." I asked how it could harm the user, but they insisted that if the user were not to benefit from it, they were not going to consider doing it.

I do love google

[CSMastermind]

However I worry about their rapid asscention into a computer gaint. With this purchase they add to their already impressive profile as an inovative technology leader. I'm sure MS looked much the same way back in the early 90s. I've been using yahoo more lately but their interface is far too confused to make me want to use them regualarly. Now repersents a time when google open to an attack from a well directed company who has the software to compete with them in the scearch market. Lets hope that google doesn't go monoply on us.

Re:I do love google

[tquinlan]

It's not far too confused, you just don't know the proper place to start your searches:

search.yahoo.com

Nice and clean, easy to use.

Urchin Rocks

[filmmaker]

I've been singing the high praises of Urchin 6 (this is the promo piece) since I first saw it. Urchin 5 in and of itself is pretty addictive. The ROI tracking stuff and some of the other analyses that 6 provides will do wonders in terms of consolidating report generation and I suppose now AdSense and AdWords and things like that will be part of the package as well.

I for one, welcome our web analytics search data ROI overlords.

Re:Urchin Rocks

[ShinGouki]

urchin does, in fact, rock.
i've deployed it on a bunch of systems with varying needs from 14gig logfiles to 10,000+ website environments and it has handled everything i've thrown at it, done it faster and better than any other stats software i've ever seen.

now that it's been bought by google i'm assuming it will get even better since urchin's cutting-edge approach to statistical analysis matches perfectly with google's unique approach to coding

Marketing Analysis Bot says:

[Rac3r5]

I know what you bought last summer. :p

Can they do no wrong?

[numLocked]

I feel like a should be scared of how much influence and power Google is gaining - any corporation that size just HAS to evil, doesn't it? But they keep impressing me! Like Google Maps is 100x better than mapquest. They just keep rolling out great features, so I can't bring myself to fear them.

Re:Can they do no wrong?

[mattyrobinson69]

I'm guessing they're divertifying their markets incase microsoft does end up with the dominant search engine (it shouldn't happen, but it could - ive been seeing a lot of adverts on TV for msn search recently (UK) and it'l be the default search engine in IE7.

Urchin + Adsense

[Rightcoast]

This makes perfect sense for Google. I would expect the Urchin software to begin "recommending" the use of a larger adsense/adwords campaign very soon, and that means a bigger war chest for Google.

deWORSification

[Mrs. Grundy]

Peter Lynch, in his pop-investor books, talks about young companies who suddenly come into a lot of cash through an IPO and stop innovating and try to grow via purchases of ever-expanding diversity. He calls this deworsification when companies grow out of their expertise. This isn't always bad--a company needs to grow after all--but it can often be a sign of a company that isn't going to be innovating the same way. Now, it's not like google just went out and bought a fast-food franchise (although 'google burger' has a nice ring to it), but If I was a stock holder in google I might be looking closely at this strategy and start looking around for another innovative start-up whose valuation isn't so high and who is concentrating on a smaller array of products.

Not all that significant

[bradleyland]

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.

Re:Not all that significant

[geoffspear]

Damn... you mean all those MSN Bot hits on my site don't mean I'm about to get bought out by Microsoft for millions of dollars?

Excuse me, I'm got a Ferrari to return.

Will they do something about the bloat?

[nathan s]

I run a few websites on a managed dedicated server and one of the tools that we're offered is Urchin (version 5, I believe). I generally use awstats instead. Urchin is painfully slow to use and has the most horrible date-range system for reports that I've ever had the misfortune to use.

I wonder if Google will clean it up and make it run as smoothly as the main Google search page. It might not make me wince so much to use.

Just my opinion, of course. Your mileage may well vary.

Re:Will they do something about the bloat?

[gb506]

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.

Very smart move

[Ars-Fartsica]

You can deride it as "big brother" etc by the fact is, hyper-tracking of web activity is going to be very very big business.

Of course there is only so much you can pull out of data, and many firms will get caught up in "analysis paralysis" and over-reliance on back-looking stats instead of risk taking on new ideas, but that realization will only come after billions have been spent chasing the dream of apparently being able to mind-read consumers.

This is the best web acquisition this year.

well

[Sv-Manowar]

I know some webmasters have expressed their discomfort with Google's conversion tracking because Google gets a rough estimate on the ROI from Adwords campaigns. I wonder if they will have access to the data Urchin collects. If so this could put Google in control of some extraordinarly valuable data.

another takeover

[Phy6]

Your uniqueness will be added to our own.

Google vs. Microsoft

[IdJit]

I can remember not so long ago when most of the X-[acquires/buys/takes over]-Y stories were almost always about Microsoft grabbing up some little company.

These days, however, it seems like Google's on the takeover shopping spree.

Would have merit if true...

[PackMan97]

...of course with GoogleMaps, GoogleSuggest, GMail, GoogleGroups and a host of other innovative best of class apps...I don't see Google sitting around picking their noses.

Google is creating kick ass products internally and buying best of breed when they see a good fit/missing expertise. Nothing wrong at all with this.

We are not Google's customers, we are product.

[refactored]

Never forget, we are not Google's customers.

We are their product.

We buy nothing from Google, the advertizers pay Google, not us.

We are merely eyeballs to sell.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again...

[Skudd]

Google is becoming too big in too short of a period of time. Sure, Microsoft probably exploded just as fast, but look at where it's gotten them: They monopolize the OS and productivity market, using claims that open source is insecure and vulnerable to attacks and source poisoning.

Yes, there will always be a smaller, less popular alternative, but that doesn't do a whole lot for the person that sees advertisements for Google all over the place. Telling people to just use Google is very analogous to Windows being pushed in classrooms and retail centers.

Pardon me while I don my tin foil hat.

Bad news for Search Optimizers?

[miller60]

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.