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

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?…