Google is making its hosted web analytics service free
to use, to enable more firms to track the effectiveness of their
online marketing campaigns.
Though free, Google Analytics will come with a five million per
month page view limit. This is more than enough for smaller
companies and also for many larger organisations.
This cap is removed if the user is a Google Adwords advertiser,
said company said.
Google Analytics was, in the past, called Urchin on Demand, and
cost £120 a month with a 100,000 monthly page view limit. The
decision to make the system free comes after Google acquired the
Urchin product earlier this year.
Google Analytics monitors the performance and results of banner
ads, e-mail newsletters, paid search, and other types of Web
marketing campaigns across all web portals and sites, so website
owners can track how their customers reached them.
The Google platform produces a host of reports and graphs to
illustrate the various marketing figures.
Google's move is designed to firm up support for existing Google
web advertisers and attract new ones.
The web analytics market is a growing one, but Google’s decision
to make its product free, is likely to leave existing web analytics
companies focusing on providing more specialist services to
companies willing to pay.