Google Re-Opens Analytics Service as Invite-Only

taboguilla writes "As of January 11, after freezing the Google Analytics new user subscriptions shortly after it first started, Google's snazzy web site hit counter is adding new users on an invitation-only basis. If you would like an invitation, you can submit your email address to on the Google Analytics home page and wait until they decide you are worthy."

Comments

What is Google analytics?

[jpolonsk]

It always helps when you explain what you are talking about?

Re:What is Google analytics?

[Michael Crutcher]

This page provides a much better starting point. "Snazzy web hit counter" doesn't even begin to describe what it is. A hit counter is extremely simple and doesn't require a lot of resources in terms of minds or hardware. What they've done requires both.

What they've apparently built (I wish I had access so I could check it out) is a standard analytics model based on click stream traffic for websites and an infrastructure to support distributed web reports. Click stream analyisis for websites is not a trivial problem. The hardware required to host this given the reports they're generating and the data sizes they're working with has got to be huge. What they've built is probably pretty simple since the type of data they're tracking about your customers (whether the page was clicked) is pretty limited. I'm curious as to what exactly their script does - is it solely clicks or is tracking users over a session?

Of course if you subscribe to the google really is evil (or they want to make money) what they're going to eventually do is merge all of their traffic data (including gmail, google videos, etc.) to provide analytics on the customer the clickstream stuff is definately interesting, but the customer profile would be a lot more valuable.

They may even provide the click stream data for free and offer all of their services as well as consultation for developing custom data models for the merchant. This is a stretch but given their areas of expertise would make some sort of sense.

Re:Pardon my ignorance

[coolcold]

because it provides them publicity and server load control

Worth a try...

[Critical_]

It seems like Google must be doing some sort of datamining on all the data its aquired through searches, sitemaps, email, and now a "hit counter." Is it really improving their results? I don't really think so because certain search terms are still marred by the typical commericial or SEO junk. I really think the next step for the search engines is to start work on creating a better way to index all those subject specific web forums on the internet that have massive amounts of good information but very poor searching capabilities.

Oh, if you have an invite send one my way so I can check this out for myself... is300fan "at" hotmail.com Thanks

The future of Google

[dada21]

Everyone who is anti-Google complains about how Google should stop trying new things and stick to what they're good at. The thing about Google is that they're not really "good" at anything -- they're great at finding new markets by continuously pushing the envelope of need.

I love the Analytics idea, and I hope I get chosen. Web site performance is one of the most complex dances I've ever seen, and I believe Google may be one of a very select few companies with a group of minds that can properly understand what we think is just a simple hit count.

I'm anti-stock market, and I believe the Google is way overvalued (more realistic would be 10 times earnings and even that is too much without a reasonable dividend), but I think they have the talent pool needed to finally move beyond the desktop, the operating system and the hardware. Whoever said that information was the PC was right -- but it isn't just access to information that makes it have any value. You need to be able to aggregate, sort and display that information in an understand fashion. The hit counter is one of the most important (and overlooked) piece of information when it comes to understanding how to make your website more valuable to your users and to your investors.

Re:Pardon my ignorance

[abscissa]

Gmail is invite only to make it very difficult, if not impossible, for spammers to create a large volume of accounts to spam with. For any other normal user, it should be a joke to get an invite however. If you live in the US you can get Google to send you one via SMS.

agreed

[mgkimsal2]

I agree, and I touched on this topic of Google's growing ownership of data and people seeming not to care about it here. It was more centered on the "google wifi" proposals in the news last fall, but the idea is the same. Many people really DON'T see any harm in it, or "so what, google should be rewarded for this" type of attitude. I've met very few people who understand the importance of how much control google will have over web metadata.

Will we see antitrust actions against google at some point? Maybe that's why they moved the analytics program to 'invite only' from 'free for all'? Imagine if MS had bought an industry leading application (urchin), rolled it in to the next Windows Update, and given it away for free. What would the reaction have been?

Re:Adblock is your friend...

[sethadam1]

But why? Urchin is to help a webmaster. Do you want to hurt the websites you visit? I can understanding blocking annoying features - I block tons of JS and flash and cookies, but why not run this script?

Sometimes the ad blocking crowd are a little overzealous.

Re:Adblock is your friend...

[Quixote]

This lets Google track me everywhere on the WWW. A cookie set by Google-Analytics can be read by the script from every site that has the script; therefore they (Google) can track you as you jump from Slashdot to Digg to Bullzeye to RecipeCentral and so on (assuming these sites have the Urchin script). I don't like the idea of being tracked everywhere I go like this.

I am amazed that the Googleaid-drinking Slashdot crowd isn't up in arms about this tracking possibility.

Re:Pardon my ignorance

[hlh_nospam]

Gmail is invite only to make it very difficult, if not impossible, for spammers to create a large volume of accounts to spam with.

Huh? It would be trivially simple to get any number of gmail accounts to spam with. Each new signup get 100 invitations, and you can send them to your own email account. If you have a "catch-all", you could send 100 invitations to random-name@catch-all-account.com, and each of those gets 100 invitations to send, etc. Plus your original account will get refreshed with 100 invitations within a day or two. You could hire some minimum-wage grunt to do the work for you and have several thousand of these in a week.

Re:Open source versions

[rainwater]

And hell, why doesn't google releases this thing (or at least a lite version) as open source for the webmasters?

Because Google wants the data. That's why they give it away for free. Google is an advertisement company first these days. Analytics is just another way for Google to collect data to use to improve their targetted ads.