Google Analytics

2 minute read Published: 14 Nov, 2005

A few months ago Google bought Urchin, provider of web analytics software ‘used by over 20% of the Fortune 500′ and also, until their recent move, by TextDrive where this site is hosted. TextDrive seemed unable to re-negotiate a site license for Urchin (and began work on a home-grown Ruby on Rails solution code-named Anemone). Here’s the reason why: Google Analytics, released today, is essentially Urchin 5 for free. And I was just thinking about buying Mint.

If you’re looking for something more immediate (Google Analytics only updates every hour), try Tom Dyson’s Peastat a simple, free, ‘live’ web stats analyser which “looks at the last chunk of your log file to create real-time summaries of recent user activity” and best of all provides an Atom feed.

Update: not sure what’s up with Analytics. Ever since I signed up, my account’s status has been ‘Waiting for Data’ (although clicking on ‘View Reports’ does take me through to stats).

Today though, I’m just getting redirected to google.co.uk after logging in. (Still that gave me a chance to check out the five finalists for the Doodle 4 Google competition.)

Maybe they’re trying to sort out relationships with their paying customers first.

Update: Looks like Google are once again accepting new signups and additional profiles for existing accounts. And, if like me you’re frustrated that Analytics doesn’t play well with Safari, here’s a useful tip on how to force graphs etc. to render correctly.