Google Offers Web Analytics for Free

"Webmasters can get free, sophisticated tools to determine how many people are visiting their sites, and what they're clicking on, causing suffering among pricey competitors."

Major good news for small web site owners! Google has made Urchin statistics available for free in a script-driven application. All you have to do is paste a small piece of script into every page on your web site (that you want tracked, you can skip pages that you do not want statistics on!), and go into the reporting application to see the results. The only limitation I have seen so far on the application is that it is limited to 5M pageviews per month for non AdWords advertisers. This will not be a problem for most small sites. Larger sites can always initiate a small AdWords campaign to qualify.

Our classes have always emphasized the importance of comprehensive, thorough site statistics to enable site operators to manage their site performance. The Urchin reporting package is one of the better packages available and will easily meet the needs of most site owners.

For more information, go to the Google Web Analytics page. Thanks to Bob Tchoryk, one of our class participants, for the "heads-up" on this news!