I was reading Mariano’s blog and found this episode of Southpark he found at Martin Varsavsky blog.

CREEPY!!!

Some posts ago, I wrote a post called “Since Gatineau nothing will ever be the same” because Gatineau was the first competitor, a real one, that Google Analytics has as the top free Player. I was sure that the competition among free tools would be the base of a new age in analytics, the age where the most flexible and powerful tools reduce their price and become “smarter”.

Now Yahoo! accelerated the process, because a Flexible and smart tool as Indextools is going to be provided free of charge. So we don’t have two Analytics tools markets, but just one…for free.

The economy theory says that as close the substitute products are as important the variable price become. I mean, if you have two identical products, why should you pay more money for one of them?. Now lets leave the books aside for a moment because in the real world there are not identical products (even commodities are not so), because they are different in something, services, price, quality, perception, etc.

So, even when there are not identical products when the gap in the variable “price” get larger, the small differences become more and more irrelevant. Just imagine what is gonna happen with the rest of the paid tools when Yahoo! begins providing Indextools for free. How will you convince your Finance department to Paid 100k dollars a month for Omniture when you have Indextools that in most cases provide you more than what you really need to use.
Until now we can say that it is the end of the paid tools, or at least the expensive ones. Some other may imagine that Omniture, Webtrends, Coremetrix, Clicktracks, etc, will be bought by Google (just to give an example) to compete directly with Yahoo! Indextools (of course Google Analytics is not yet prepared to compete with Indextools). But if we do so we are leaving lot of variables out of the analysis, actually probably the most important one for Big Clients, which is the value of the information. I mean, the NYTimes wont be worried if they have a monthly big bill to pay in a Web Analytics tool service, but they will definitely worried if their information is not safe or at least it may be used by another corporation, with or without bad intentions.
Companies have different needs and perceive each product in a very particular way, that is why they must be provided with different solutions. So from now on, clients should measure how important is each of the following variables for them in order to choose the right Web Analytics tools:

• Quantity of information.
• Quality of information.
• Flexibility of generating information.
• Implementation and maintenance difficulty.
• Provider independency.
• Provider reputation (Something really important if you are not hosting your information, like in the most of “page tagging solutions”)
• Price.
• And so many others.

Remember “Since Gatineau nothing will ever be the same“? Well, apparently I was correct but probably failed in one thing…”time”. I thought the market would adjust gradually, free tools get smarter, paid tools should also get smarter and cheaper. I always said that, in my opinion, paid Web Analytics tools could be cheaper, actually must be cheaper, so I was looking at the above mentioned dynamic as something really positive.

The Indextools acquisition by Yahoo! is not another acquisition, it is a milestone in the Web Anlalytics market, actually this acquisition is already Shaking the market in front of the amazed vendors, web analytics professionals and clients.

Unfortunatelly, as some of you already know, my company (Intellignos) is Indextools Strategic Alliance Partner so, at this momento, I cannot give much information about it but let me show you what Dennis Mortensen (former COO at Indextools, and current Director of Data Insights at Yahoo!) posted today in his blog:

“Today we will communicate that we’ll require our partners and clients to accept a new standard Yahoo! agreement and that Yahoo! (we) currently intends to provide the service FREE of charge to clients and partners who accept the Yahoo! Agreement. It is however important to note that our clients and partners must accept this agreement to continue using the service.”

Interesting uh? I’m preparing a longer post about my vision of the future of the Web Analytics tools market.

This morning I fount this Press Release announcing that Yahoo! bought Tense Kft, better known as Indextools, one of the most powerful Web Analytics solutions in the market.
With this agreement Yahoo! is seeking to provide its clients with better marketing information in order to improve the results achieved with Yahoo!s platforms.“Yahoo! believes that the ability to generate the most valuable and relevant insights is essential to seizing market opportunities and creating successful campaigns,“ said Bassel Ojjeh, senior vice president and head of Yahoo!’s Strategic Data Solutions group. “We expect that the IndexTools’ technology platform will provide our customers the opportunity to more quickly uncover and act on these insights, enhancing Yahoo!’s status as a partner of choice in online marketing and the must buy for the world’s advertisers.”

The big problem with this announcement is the Buzz about Indextools would be free. Why? Because at this point that is not true, but the people are expecting a free version of Indextools, so any announce against this will generate discontent in the market. Why? Because history tells us that Google bought Urchin to develop Google Analytics (free), then Microsoft bought Deepmetrix to develop Gatineau (Free), and now Yahoo! acquire Indextools…so it is impossible that people don’t think… “Indextools for free !!!”. Actually please don’t forget what happened with the five dollars Gatineau Registration Process…and we was talking just about five dollars (ok, it was a betta…right, but we was talking about just five dollars!!!)

Well, the news is very recent, so we must wait a bit more to know what are Yahoo!’s plans with this acquisition, just remember what I said some posts ago… Since Gatineau nothing will be ever the same

The Social Networks in Latin America (Download PFD)

The global phenomenon of social networks is landing in Latin America. Techcrunch recently published an article about Sonico describing it as the largest and most unknown social network in the region.
Social networks are the foundation of the Web 2.0 - would be the equivalent of the traditional Web portals - and consist of sites where users can create a profile and contact other people. These users produce content that can be shared with other members within the network.

However, so far it has not been dimensioned clearly the impact that social networks are taking among Internet users in the region, because the debate is been driven to a purely impressionistic one. With focused on providing conclusive data about this phenomenon we analyzed data from ComScore. Read More

Finally YouTube has launched a suit of Analytics tools that help users analyze the performance of their videos.

Even when YouTube already offers comments, ratings and a ranking for each clip this new tool Analytics Suit called “YouTube Insight” adds context about location and time when the users what each specific video.

Since youtube became a new advertising channel I was really waiting for this service, unfortunately it is pretty basic and if I’m not wrong it has no API. Anyways it is definitely better than nothing and a great start ;-).

Visit the Youtube Blog for more information

The next 24th of March 2008 the members of the Web Analytics Association will be electing six of the twelve directors of its Committee.

I am delighted to announce that I am one of the 17 nominees, thanks to the support received mainly by Avinash and Enrique. I would also like to thanks to Nerina Luloaga for her support on generating the required documents.

Since the nominees information is only available for WAA members, there is not much information I can provide about them, but I can tell you that all of them are very recognized professionals with a vast career in the Web Analytics. It is an honor for me share this nomination with all of them.

The candidates are:

Vicky Brock, Co-Founder Highland Busines Research

Angie Brown, Web Analytics Manager at Elsevier

Marianina Chaplin, Web Analytics Manager at Right Move
Juan Damia, Partner at Intellignos

June Dershewitz, Vice President of Analytic at Semphonic

Richard Foley, Web Analytics World Wide Product Manager at SAS

Enriqué Gonzales, Director/Manager at National Public Radio

Vicki Jasper, New Business Development at AH Belo Interactive.

Avinash Kaushik, Author/Evangelist and current Director at ZQ Insights

Alex Langshur, President at Publicinsite

John Payne, Vice President and General Manager at Coremetrics

Robert Russotti, Director/Manager at ANSI
Daniel Savage, Vice President, Media and Web Analytics at Market Maker Interactive

Rachel Scotto, Executive Director, Market Research and CRM/Email Marketing, Interactive Division, Sony Pictures Entertainment

Shubhra Srivastava, Manager Online Analytics at Nokia

Jim Sterne, Founder Emetrics Marketing Optimization Summit

April Wilson, Director of Customer Value Management at Dallas Morning News

I would also like to point out that all the candidates proposals are really interesting and cover a particular Web Analytics Association need, so is not going to be about voting the best professional (something really hard to define) but the ones with proposals that covers the main WAA needs.

Regarding my proposal, it is focused on spreading the WAA through all Latin America based on the following objetives:

* Give support to the people who are beginning with this activity and require knowledge and support.

* Generate the perfect environment to professionals who need to exchange ideas that will help improve practices and tools.

* Provide companies with better professionals to provide them with accurate information.

My best wishes to all the nominees!!!

One of the pillars of the Analytics 2.0 theory is “Integration” and a 360 degree view, because the only thing what matters is having relevant information close to your hands. I don’t really care where does the information comes from.
Last 5th of March Google Analytics launched the beta version of “Benchmarking”, a new report that will allows you to compare yourself with any available Vertical Industry. I found this report simply amazing because it is really hard to now how your business is doing until you compare it with another company from your industry. How can you know who is the taller student from your class if there is just one student?
I know that some people will say, “They are not correctly generating clusters”, or “some of the sites from a particular industry are not well comparable”, etc, etc, but come on, do you think it is possible to have information with much certainty with the current Internet situation? I guess not. Web Analytics professionals are asked everyday to generate benchmarks from nothing, so we have to generate complicated statistical models that at the end are nothing but inferences from another inference. So, even when the information from Google is based on “sampling” and we have not enough information to guarantee an acceptable error margin (I mean, not yet) this information will give you an idea about your market. It is also important that you take that information as what it is, just a mere Benchmark.
I do also agree with the way they implemented it in every Google Analytics Account. When you login to you account you will get the following message:

In order to improve your experience with google products, google analytics is updating its data sharing policy. You now have the ability to share your analytics data with other google services. This will improve integration, enable additional features in google’s advertising services (including google analytics, AdWords and AdSense) and improve your experience with these products. Next you will see the “accept” button.

Once you accept you will see the “Edit Account and Data Sharing Settings” page from within your account to opt in to sharing your data “With Google products only” or “Anonymously with Google products and the benchmarking service.”
Regarding the second possibility Google says “If you choose to share your site’s data, Google will use the data to improve the products and services we provide you. Additionally, only users who have opted to share their site’s data with Google may use these new or improved services.”

Once you accepted to Share your site’s data, the following Message will appear to your Benchmarking Reporting Interface “Benchmarking has been enabled for your site. Data from other sites that have enabled benchmarking is now being collected and combined. Industry statistics will appear in this report within two weeks”.

I think it is just awesome, because if you want to get information from the market, you are obligated to share yours making the “sample” bigger, reducing the uncertainty. If you don’t want to share your information don’t mind, you can still use Google Analytics as you ever did.

Once the information is available you will be able to see the following report interface:

Remember my diagram about the Web Analytics market since Gatineau? The fight between free tools started, let’s see how “Paid Tools” will answer to this provocation. Is the market getting interesting or what?

The first thing I thought when heard about Gatineau (Microsoft’s Web Analytics Solution) was, “now the market will become interesting”. Even when Google Analytics is not the best Web Analytics solution (I mean, not at all), is a great solution if we consider that is free, indeed is better than some none free ones. In that time I imagined the web analytics market as follow.

Apparently I was not wrong, if you take a look at the Google Analtics’s blog they are launching updates without taking a breath. Actually they don’t even give me the chance of posting about one update and they are launching another one. Do you think I’m exaggerating? Take a look at it.
The following are the improvements Google Analytics launched since Gatineau started sending beta invitations (November 2007).
1-    Site Search Now Available
2-    Update for Some ga.js users and Request for More GAACs!.
3-    Announcing new graphing tools, ga.js tracking, and six new languages.
4-    Where Did My Paid Search Traffic Go?
5-    Urchin Software Beta Now Public.
6-    Google Analytics integrates with Google Audio Ads.
7-    Benchmarking now available plus additional opt-in settings.

I used the original Post Titles so you can find them in the Google Analytics Blog (because in January they also launched the blog search ;-).

Probably I’m forgetting some other improvements but I think it is enough to get what my point is.

I’m still thinking we need a third player in the free market. Yahoo?…

Finally Google launched the beta version of Urchin. To those not familiarized with it, , Urchin is the Logfile Analyzer platform used by Google to build Google Analytics. Log file analyzer is the type of Web Analytics platform that you install in your server without any tag in your site pages.

The logfile analyzers advantages are:

1- No direct variable cost (you don’t pay per pageview).

2- The information is always on your servers, no matter which tool you use.

3- We can change the Web Analytics Tool as many times as we want it and the information will be always available.

4- You can analyze historical information. Example: You have an small business on the internet, it starts growing and you need information to make decisions, if you install a Page Tagging platform you must wait to start tracking information, and your historical information is lost. With Log file analyzer you can install it two years later and analyze all your historical information (I mean is technically possible but probably your servers will blow out ).

4- Sites with firewalls and other restrictions can use it since it Works on the server side.

The disadvantages are:

1- Delimited tracking ability.

2- It requires a technical support team available (this problem is solved if your company already counts with an IT department, but you must consider the work overload) for potential contingencies.

3- Server overload.

4- Difficult to use when your site is not hosted in-house.

5- The information is not real time. Normally the logfile analyzers are setup to process logs once a day (when you site has less traffic) since that activity reduces the server performance.

Now, let’s come back to Urchin. It is a Beta version, so just install it for testing proposes (as Google is communicating “This beta software should only be used for evaluation purposes, and is not recommended for production environments”) and not for production environments.

Regarding the front end, it looks between the former version Urchin (menus and information layout) and the previous version of Google Analytics..

The oficial communicated advantages are:

1-    More accurate geo-identification of visitors (I can believe they say that).
2-    Cross-segmentation options similar to Google Analytics.
3-    E-commerce and campaign tracking included (no longer requiring additional modules).
4-    Vastly improved embedded scheduler to more easily manage processing and re-processing jobs.
5-    Improved user interface.
6-    More robust log processing engine.

I had for several clients installed Urchin and Google Analytics in parallel, and I think is important to point out that even when they share platforms are not the same thing. Actually are very different tools and process the information in a different way, so the reported information will not be homogenous.

The product will has a one shot cost of U$S2995 (since you buy the software license) and will be distributed by the Uchin Authorized Agents.

Since I was an Urchin user for a long time, and reading all this information I must say I have several doubts about it. In first place I had no time to test it yet, but the Urchin Platform was imprecise and not so powerful so in my opinion if what they are offering is similar to the previous version, a cost f U$S2995 looks pretty high, even more if we take into account that it is not even as powerful as Goggle Analytics (that is free). I repeat, I have not test this new version yet, I’m just talking about the former version.

As we all know there is no other way to have an idea if it worth or not U$S2995. So what are you waiting for? Let’s test it and send me your opinion.