I’ve been raving about Urchin to clients for quite a while at only $199/mo and now Google has decided to change Urchin over to Google Analytics and offer it for free. Wow.
The Urchin site is now redirecting to http://www.google.com/analytics/
According to Digital Inspiration blog, “the free version is limited to 5 million pageviews a month but the limit is is removed if you’re also an active AdWords publisher.”
Also, Google Analytics is said to intergrate very well with Google AdWords to better measure paid search ROI and you can track up to 50 profiles.
Online sign up is easy and only requires a Google account. Once signed up, just paste a snippet of JavaScript code into your web pages and that’s about it.
Nacho at Search Engine Roundtable has posted comments and ClickZ is chiming in as well.
Holy cow! That’s awesome. I’m going to have to install it on a few sites and see it in action.
Soooo… what’s happened to the other Urchin products – specifically Urchin 5 on which we have spent quite a bit licencing and installing
Chris, that is a VERY good question. It looks like they may be phased out, but I’ve not seen official word from Google yet.
Chris/Lee,
it looks like Google is going to continue to offer Urchin5 through Google Analytics Partners.
Here is a link to the list of partners they have chosen to manage Urchin5 (and possibly the other Urchin products):
http://www.google.com/analytics/support_locator.html
I hope this helps. Good Luck!
“Here is a link to the list of partners they have chosen to manage Urchin5 (and possibly the other Urchin products):
http://www.google.com/analytics/support_locator.html”
That’s a joke being perped by Google. I tracked that URL down yesterday arvo (and I really had to work hard to find it). I rang the “partner” in our region and they were unaware of their appointment or even the . Furthermore, Google had not deigned to tell them of the impending change even though they were the regional exclusive distributor of Urchin products. In fact the first they know about any change in anything was when a customer of theirs called them at around 9.30 am Tuesday (ie. 3.30 pm Pacific on Monday). When we parted we had agreed that Urchin 5 probably ought to be rebranded “Orphan 5”.
Earlier I had spoke to the local Google reps. They knew about the change but they certaibly did not have a handle on it nor did they appreciate that there was a difference between Urchin 5 and Urchin 6 (ie. 6 wasn’t actually an upgrade of 5).
For the record the Google Analytics launch seems to be a bit of a mess. I signed up for it for one of our sites (and added the snippets to pages etc) and 24 hours later – no stats – just the stats “will be available within 12 hours message”.
Furthermore even though there is a Google Group for Analytics it seems to be impossible to join either on the group sign up page or by email – and I have been a member of some groups for more than a year.
^^^ unaware of their appointment or even the fact that they had been appointed as a partner ^^^^