Google has temporarily stopped new users getting its
hosted web analytics service, after being overwhelmed with
applications after it decided to offer it for free last
week.
Visitors to the Google Analytics sign-up page are greeted with
the message, “Thank you for your interest in Google Analytics!
Google Analytics has experienced extremely strong demand, and as a
result we have temporarily limited the number of new sign-ups as we
increase capacity.”
The company had previously charged $199 (£117) for the service.
Potential users are being asked to leave their details on the site
to enable them to be contacted about using the free service at a
later date.
The service was previously known as Urchin on Demand, and allows
companies to monitor the success or otherwise of their on-line
marketing campaigns. It can tell users for instance which websites
were visited by their on-line customers before they came to their
site.
Some existing users of the service started to experience
performance degradation last week under the weight of the rapidly
increasing number of new users.
This was the main reason Google pulled the plug on new
subscriptions. Google did not say when new registrations for the
service would resume.