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Google Businesses The Internet IT

Google Re-Opens Analytics Service as Invite-Only 169

Posted by CowboyNeal from the velvet-ropes dept.
taboguilla writes "As of January 11, after freezing the Google Analytics new user subscriptions shortly after it first started, Google's snazzy web site hit counter is adding new users on an invitation-only basis. If you would like an invitation, you can submit your email address to on the Google Analytics home page and wait until they decide you are worthy."
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Google Re-Opens Analytics Service as Invite-Only More

Google Re-Opens Analytics Service as Invite-Only

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  • What is Google analytics? (Score:4, Insightful)

    by jpolonsk ( 739332 ) on Saturday January 14, 2006 @12:10PM (#14471438)
    It always helps when you explain what you are talking about?

    • Re:What is Google analytics? (Score:4, Funny)

      by iogan ( 943605 ) on Saturday January 14, 2006 @12:14PM (#14471461) Homepage
      Google's snazzy web site hit counter is adding new users
      I would venture a guess that it's some kind of web site hit counter. But I'm not 100% on that..

      __________
      link yo blog/website with yo face http://www.doyoulikemyface.com/ [doyoulikemyface.com]
      • Google bought out Urchin. This is their replacement for Urchin.

        Essentially it does what Urchin does, statistical analysis of traffic and visitors, broken down into all sorts of categories. How many people from Madrid, Montreal, New York, etc. How many people using WinXP, Linux, Firefox, Safari, etc. How many pages people load per visit. What the returns on your AdWords ads are (how many people coming from there are doing anything meaningful with the site). What pages people are visiting. How many are new vi
    • RTFA: follow the link to get to the google analytics explanation page.

    • Re:What is Google analytics? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Michael Crutcher ( 631990 ) on Saturday January 14, 2006 @12:39PM (#14471583)
      This [google.com] page provides a much better starting point. "Snazzy web hit counter" doesn't even begin to describe what it is. A hit counter is extremely simple and doesn't require a lot of resources in terms of minds or hardware. What they've done requires both.

      What they've apparently built (I wish I had access so I could check it out) is a standard analytics model based on click stream traffic for websites and an infrastructure to support distributed web reports. Click stream analyisis for websites is not a trivial problem. The hardware required to host this given the reports they're generating and the data sizes they're working with has got to be huge. What they've built is probably pretty simple since the type of data they're tracking about your customers (whether the page was clicked) is pretty limited. I'm curious as to what exactly their script does - is it solely clicks or is tracking users over a session?

      Of course if you subscribe to the google really is evil (or they want to make money) what they're going to eventually do is merge all of their traffic data (including gmail, google videos, etc.) to provide analytics on the customer the clickstream stuff is definately interesting, but the customer profile would be a lot more valuable.

      They may even provide the click stream data for free and offer all of their services as well as consultation for developing custom data models for the merchant. This is a stretch but given their areas of expertise would make some sort of sense.

    • From TFA:

      "Google Analytics tells you everything you want to know about how your visitors found you and how they interact with your site. You'll be able to focus your marketing resources on campaigns and initiatives that deliver ROI, and improve your site to convert more visitors."

      "Learn how visitors interact with your website and identify the navigational bottlenecks that keep them from completing your conversion goals. Find out how profitable your keywords are across search engines and campaigns. Pinpo

    • Re:What is Google analytics? (Score:2, Funny)

      by Anonymous Coward
      It's what I block using Ad-Block so that webpages load faster.
    • search for it... in google :P
    • Unfortunately, no one can be told what Google Analytics is. You have to see it for yourself.

      Take the Blue Pill, you go to sleep, and believe whatever you want to believe.
      Take the Red Pill, and I'll show you just how deep the Google Analytics hole goes.

  • Pardon my ignorance (Score:4, Interesting)

    by matr0x_x ( 919985 ) on Saturday January 14, 2006 @12:10PM (#14471439) Homepage
    but can someone please explain why Google is so big on the "invite only" idea. Isn't Gmail technically "invite only" right now - and everyone and their dog has an account there.

    • Re:Pardon my ignorance (Score:5, Insightful)

      by coolcold ( 805170 ) on Saturday January 14, 2006 @12:12PM (#14471450) Homepage
      because it provides them publicity and server load control

    • Re:Pardon my ignorance (Score:4, Insightful)

      by abscissa ( 136568 ) on Saturday January 14, 2006 @12:20PM (#14471495)
      Gmail is invite only to make it very difficult, if not impossible, for spammers to create a large volume of accounts to spam with. For any other normal user, it should be a joke to get an invite however. If you live in the US you can get Google to send you one via SMS.
      • Actually, you can live in many other countries and still use SMS to sign up for Gmail.

        https://www.google.com/accounts/SmsMailSignup1 [google.com]
      • Gmail is invite only to make it very difficult, if not impossible, for spammers to create a large volume of accounts to spam with.
        So how does it happen that big part of spam I'm getting (and most of what coming through my filters) coming from gmail?
      • Gmail is invite only to make it very difficult, if not impossible, for spammers to create a large volume of accounts to spam with.

        Huh? It would be trivially simple to get any number of gmail accounts to spam with. Each new signup get 100 invitations, and you can send them to your own email account. If you have a "catch-all", you could send 100 invitations to random-name@catch-all-account.com, and each of those gets 100 invitations to send, etc. Plus your original account will get refreshed with 100 invit

        • And when they see spam coming out of it they can trace it all back to one account and ban the whole tree.
        • And if coaght spamming, Google with purge every account in the invitation tree few levels deep.
        • But since all accounts were set up via the same 'stem' account Google can easily determine they were all set up with the same BS in mind and shut them all down at once without worrying about if they are legit. And once the first couple thousand emails were sent a flag would go up for sure and all of the invited accounts would have a very low celing before shutting down as well.

          Hell knowing Google they probably have a reverse spam filter which looks at all emails going out as well as in and close your acc
    • The invite only model does two things which I think actually boost membership:
      1) It makes elitists think that they are cool for having one,
      2) It allows google to have a massive army of recruiters, each inviting all of their friends and family members and, as the parent says, pets.
    • The reason for "invite only" is because when Google first debuted Analytics, the sheer number of requests was too much. I managed to get in during that first round. only to see the new accounts and the ability to measure additional websites disabled within a day.

      It does a nice job of tying in with AdSense, as well as giving demographic information, such as referrer information.

      In order to measure a site, the webmaster needs to embed some javascript within the page. If you don't want to be tracked, add "ht

  • Worth a try... (Score:4, Insightful)

    by Critical_ ( 25211 ) on Saturday January 14, 2006 @12:15PM (#14471465) Homepage
    It seems like Google must be doing some sort of datamining on all the data its aquired through searches, sitemaps, email, and now a "hit counter." Is it really improving their results? I don't really think so because certain search terms are still marred by the typical commericial or SEO junk. I really think the next step for the search engines is to start work on creating a better way to index all those subject specific web forums on the internet that have massive amounts of good information but very poor searching capabilities.

    Oh, if you have an invite send one my way so I can check this out for myself... is300fan "at" hotmail.com Thanks

    • I really think the next step for the search engines is to start work on creating a better way to index all those subject specific web forums on the internet that have massive amounts of good information but very poor searching capabilities.

      Omgili (Beta) is a search engine designed to index web-based discussion forums. Omgili's unique algorithm analyzes forums not as a simple web page, but as an active discussion with a title, topic and replies.

      http://www.omgili.com/ [omgili.com]

    • The really valuable data they are gathering is the invitation relationships. Who invites who. For example, if someone invites a lot of people that turn out to be spammers, then there is a good chance that person know who spammers are, and possibly even who invited them, too.

  • What's the Deal? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward on Saturday January 14, 2006 @12:16PM (#14471474)
    So, on top of its highly successful search and adsense, Google now wants to be the next DoubleClick. Well that's fine and I suppose that a lot of web monkeys want to have detailed statistics about their site. But, what is the deal with aggressive and forceful statistic collection? I'm speaking generally and not specifically about Google here.

    I've noticed a marked increase in the use of Flash to track users. I've also noticed an annoying trend of scripts that request or post information to a tracker site every second. If you leave the page open it constantly hits the tracking site.

    I find all this to be highly offensive. Web monkeys can slice and dice their logs in any way the like but stop trying to hijack my machine in persistent attempts to track my page viewing down to the second! When I come to your site, I want to view your site! I do not want your site causing my machine to load Google, DoubleClick, OLN or anyother pages. It's rude! It's dirty! It's like porn site popups! It makes me not want to come back to your site or your company. Ever!
    • I've noticed a marked increase in the use of Flash to track users. I've also noticed an annoying trend of scripts that request or post information to a tracker site every second. If you leave the page open it constantly hits the tracking site.

      Is that theft of service, trespass to chattels, or exceeding authorized access? The site is stealing your line time. If you're on dialup, and have a few pages open, this will eat up a considerable fraction of your bandwidth.

      Firefox will need blocking for this.

      • I take it you've never tried FlashBlock [mozdev.org]? It's a fairly popular extension which keeps Flash objects from running (or even loading) until they're clicked on.
        • I've been using Flashblock for quite some time now, and it's great. I've also noticed some odd things, lately. Sometimes, I'll click on some Flash to see what it is and get a static image consisting of nothing but text. There's no reason in the world to use Flash to display text like that, except that some ID10T decided to waste bandwidth on it because it could. Second, on a few sites, I click on the Flash icon and it goes away, leaving nothing. Refresh gets back the icon, but it's a case of lather, ri
      • Firefox has blocking for this, in Adblock. Block www.google-analytics.com and you won't be bothered again.
    • It makes me not want to come back to your site or your company. Ever!

      What are you doing here then? /. happily directs your browser to call to at least google-analytics.com and falkarg.net every time you hit F5.

      There are tools to get around this - ad-blocking, script-blocking and so on, as implemented in your favorite browser (or its extensions) The rule of the game is "give up or adapt" and the choice is yours.

    • Re:What's the Deal? (Score:1, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Urchin, the company Google bought and renamed to Google Analytics, isn't necessarily used strictly for advertising purposes. Website optimization is greatly helped by analytics. I can look at the statistics to see my users are bypassing the FAQ page and heading straight to my contact page to ask questions already in the FAQ. I can then develop a strategy for page hierarchy to hopefully guide the users to the FAQ before contacting my company.
      • And you can't build this sort of page view history on a per user basis yourself using a cookie and a tracking database? This isn't exactly rocket science here. It's just another chapter in Google's "pretty soon we'll have one of everything" approach to doing business on the web. And it will all be tied into making you either want to sign up to put ads on your site, or getting you to view pages that have ads on them.
        • And you can't build this sort of page view history on a per user basis yourself using a cookie and a tracking database?

          Not as long as the tinfoil hat brigade thinks that all cookies are evil and blocks them. You need something that's outside the user's control to make sure you get the info you need from every visitor, not just those with enough sense not to block session cookies.

          • Not as long as the tinfoil hat brigade thinks that all cookies are evil and blocks them. You need something that's outside the user's control

            Blocking "www.google-analytics.com" is in my control; I blocked it some time ago, not out of paranoia but because some sites seemed to be pausing while loading something from it. It didn't look like anything I needed to be inconvenienced for.

            • Blocking specific sites for specific reasons is Not A Problem. Blocking all cookies because you're afraid of them just makes life more difficult for you. My ISP has a personalized start page. Instead of having you log in every time you go there, it sets a few cookies. One of them contains the login data, another points to a record in a database that contains your preferences. If you block all cookies, all you'll ever get is the generic start page, and a request to log in if you want your personalized o
              • Blocking all cookies because you're afraid of them just makes life more difficult

                Obviously; boards like Slashdot are a pain if you have to sign in every time. But sites I visit randomly in search of specifc information and probably never again don't need a cookie active till 2037, as many try to set.

          • If you think a tinfoil-hatter is going to refuse all cookies, but still allow this sort of Javascript web bug I think you've vastly underestimated the power of paranoia. Personally, after reading this very article, I decided to install the NoScript extension to Firefox, which makes Google Analytics completely useless for tracking me, since no Javascript is ever run without my explicit permission. And like for Slashdot's web bugs, I can block the JS coming from google.com, but not JS coming from slashdot.org
            • If you think a tinfoil-hatter is going to refuse all cookies, but still allow this sort of Javascript web bug I think you've vastly underestimated the power of paranoia.

              I wasn't thinking so much in terms of paranoia as half-understood outdated info. Back about ten years ago or so, any site could read all your cookies, allowing you to be tracked from site to site. Many people started rejecting all cookies at that time, and tried to teach their friends to do the same. Once that problem was cleared up, mo

  • The future of Google (Score:5, Insightful)

    by dada21 ( 163177 ) * <adam.dada@gmail.com> on Saturday January 14, 2006 @12:17PM (#14471477) Homepage Journal
    Everyone who is anti-Google complains about how Google should stop trying new things and stick to what they're good at. The thing about Google is that they're not really "good" at anything -- they're great at finding new markets by continuously pushing the envelope of need.

    I love the Analytics idea, and I hope I get chosen. Web site performance is one of the most complex dances I've ever seen, and I believe Google may be one of a very select few companies with a group of minds that can properly understand what we think is just a simple hit count.

    I'm anti-stock market, and I believe the Google is way overvalued (more realistic would be 10 times earnings and even that is too much without a reasonable dividend), but I think they have the talent pool needed to finally move beyond the desktop, the operating system and the hardware. Whoever said that information was the PC was right -- but it isn't just access to information that makes it have any value. You need to be able to aggregate, sort and display that information in an understand fashion. The hit counter is one of the most important (and overlooked) piece of information when it comes to understanding how to make your website more valuable to your users and to your investors.

    • Overvalued? You think? Given that the book value of the company per share for the most recent quarter is: 31.959999 and it is trading at more than 14 times that, you beat they are overvalued. If you were to pay 10 times earnings would be just under 200 dollars per share. It would be foolish to pay that price - much less 400 plus.

      I'm sure some people have made some good short term money. Some might still make some money of it. Many others will be left holding the bag. In the long (or even medium) term, Goo

      • Hey, my investment advice is never pay more than 6 times earnings. The stock market is broken by the SEC and the IRS, anyway, even with a market crash (which we need), there isn't any way to get around the crazy regulations. All my money is in land (not housing!), gold/silver and my own businesses. If a business doesn't pay me at least a 20% dividend annually, I consider it a loser.

        I've read on these forums (at last ounce a month for the past 5 years or so) all these kids with huge 401Ks and the thought
  • It sounds like the intial release was just fumbled and that they would like to work out the kinks of the system a bit before they have millions upon millions using it, which is inevitable right now with anything attached to Google at the moment. Or it was a marketing gimmick, which wouldn't exactly be a surprise either.
  • Add
    http://www.google-analytics.com/*
    to your blocking rules, and all is well. :-)

    • Re:Adblock is your friend... (Score:5, Insightful)

      by sethadam1 ( 530629 ) <ascheinberg@gmai ... inus threevowels> on Saturday January 14, 2006 @01:35PM (#14471810) Homepage
      But why? Urchin is to help a webmaster. Do you want to hurt the websites you visit? I can understanding blocking annoying features - I block tons of JS and flash and cookies, but why not run this script?

      Sometimes the ad blocking crowd are a little overzealous.

      • Re:Adblock is your friend... (Score:5, Insightful)

        by Quixote ( 154172 ) * on Saturday January 14, 2006 @01:51PM (#14471865) Homepage Journal
        This lets Google track me everywhere on the WWW. A cookie set by Google-Analytics can be read by the script from every site that has the script; therefore they (Google) can track you as you jump from Slashdot to Digg to Bullzeye to RecipeCentral and so on (assuming these sites have the Urchin script). I don't like the idea of being tracked everywhere I go like this.

        I am amazed that the Googleaid-drinking Slashdot crowd isn't up in arms about this tracking possibility.

        • I'd have to agree fully, I've had the urchin script adblocked for some time now after I noticed several sites I visit calling it.
          I perfer not to be tracked by multinational companies, even those who claim "do no evil" as their business plan.

      • Re:Adblock is your friend... (Score:4, Interesting)

        by slavemowgli ( 585321 ) on Saturday January 14, 2006 @03:40PM (#14472409) Homepage
        Speak for yourself. Nobody's forcing you to block anything; in fact, the GP did not even say "OMG u h4v3 to block this now!!!111", he merely said "IF you want to block it, it's easy, as you just have to add the following filter to adblock". Whether people actually do that or not is up to them - not him, and not you either.

        And as for "do you want to hurt the websites you visit", that's the same strawman that's used by those who're against any use of ad blocking whatsoever, too, but it's still a strawman. People's intention is not to hurt websites; it's to avoid getting tracked without their knowledge or consent, in ways that they cannot check or supervise even when they want to.

        Besides, have you ever gone to the fridge to grab a can of soda or used the restroom while there was a commercial break on TV? If yes, then you should ask yourself the same thing - why do you hurt the channels you watch by not sitting there and taking notes about the products you're supposed to buy the next day?

        Advertising is built on the idea that most people won't bother ignoring it, but that doesn't mean that there's something morally wrong with doing so. If someone says "hi, would you like a cookie?" and then, after I eat it, asks me to buy something or listen to him rant about religious or political matters or the like, I'm not obliged to do that just because he gave me a cookie - and if he gets pissy and said "but you took my cookie", I would just point it out to him that he chose to give it to me out of his own free will.

        Advertising is the same. If you put up a website with advertising, don't expect people to feel obliged to look at it - and what's more, don't complain if they don't. If you absolutely want them to see it, don't let them in before sitting through it. Think that'll drive your visitors away? Tough luck, there's no constitutional right to having your business model work out.

        And while most of the above was about advertising, the same goes for tracking and the like, too. Feel free to try, but don't tell me I'm under a moral obligation to let it happen - I'm not. And if you don't like me taking your free cookie without listening to you or signing your petition afterwards... don't offer free cookies.

  • I'm wondering what the criteria are to get accepted, it doesn't seem clear from the posted link.
    • There are no criteria, it's just a tongue-in-cheek summary.

      Many of our users who previously submitted their email address to us will be receiving an invite shortly.

      [...]

      We will continue to send out additional invites as we add more capacity.

  • Got mine (Score:3, Informative)

    by alta ( 1263 ) on Saturday January 14, 2006 @12:39PM (#14471582) Homepage Journal
    I got mine the first time around. It looks pretty sweet but I haven't gotten to deep into it. It gives some pretty nice metrics on browser type, country, resolution, well everything urchin did I suppose.

    And everything comes across in executive friendly flash charts...

  • Slashdot and Sourcefoge should know better (Score:3, Interesting)

    by CMBologna ( 155447 ) on Saturday January 14, 2006 @12:46PM (#14471616) Homepage
    I've been lucky to jump early on the analytics bandwagon. However it got very apparent that they are having some performance issues and the report generation was/is still very slow. That said I still like it very much as it gave me some nice data on where my visitors live.
    However the thing that goes on my nerves is that now everybody has it including big names like slashdot, sourceforge, ati, etc. I wonder, if the service is free, shouldn't at least peple that make a lot of money from ads (slashdot, sourceforge, ati...) donate a percentage to the analytics service so that it doesn't interrupt/cripple the service for the rest of users.
    Analytics in the end helps sites target better their content, thus making more revenue both for the site and google (if they use GoogleAd's), but what if they don't use GoogleAd's? What if google doesn't beef up or scale better analytics with that revenue? That will just cripple the benefit that this service brings.

  • I find the (free) service very useful (Score:4, Interesting)

    by MarkWatson ( 189759 ) on Saturday January 14, 2006 @12:53PM (#14471645) Homepage
    There are some rough edges (availability and best with Internet Explorer [yuck]) but I use their service to track my main web site, my blog, and three J2EE-based web portals. I never thought that I needed the kind of user location and navigation information that Analytics provides, but now that I have access to this information I would not like to lose it! Knowing statistically how people navigate around your site gives you a better idea of what people like than simple web log statistics. For example, I give away all sorts of hopefully useful stuff on my main site, but to be honest, I am most keenly interested in people visiting my consulting services page. Analytics lets me see what site navigation paths lead to my consulting page.
  • This [slashdot.org] became reality quite fast :)

    But really, this is a very logical step from Google.

  • Open source versions (Score:2, Interesting)

    by afd8856 ( 700296 )
    I don't know what's special about analytics, but if there's anything noteworthy, I hope the open source alternatives, such as awstats or webalizer will pick the ideas and offer versions that will not depend on a third party such as google.

    And hell, why doesn't google releases this thing (or at least a lite version) as open source for the webmasters?
    • And hell, why doesn't google releases this thing (or at least a lite version) as open source for the webmasters?

      Because Google wants the data. That's why they give it away for free. Google is an advertisement company first these days. Analytics is just another way for Google to collect data to use to improve their targetted ads.

  • Works via Javascript ... and Slashdot uses it ... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by xmas2003 ( 739875 ) * on Saturday January 14, 2006 @01:06PM (#14471699) Homepage
    For those too lazy to RTFA, Google Analytics uses Javascript ... so obviousely you need that enabled for it to work correctly. So while most people/browsers have this enabled, it will undercount those that don't ... which incidentally includes most search engine robots.

    BTW, Slashdot has been using this for a while ... if you have any doubt, do a view source and look about 20 lines down. Since they already have access to the raw log files (argueably better data), the tin-foil hat crowd shouldn't be too worried about this WRT /. ... but it is pretty interesting that web sites are (basically) allowing Google to collect (and potentially view) this data for them.

    • I know why a small site would use it. I have it on mine because it gives me a lot of information in some really nice formats. My host gives me access to this information but it is not packaged so nicely and I don't really want to take the time to do anything to get it there.
       
      Now what I haven't even touched yet is the capability to do campaigns and track their effectiveness. I can imagine that this could be very useful for larger sites like the dot.

  • Achtung, babies. (Score:5, Interesting)

    by baudbarf ( 451398 ) on Saturday January 14, 2006 @01:07PM (#14471701) Homepage
    Am I the only person who sees danger here? I've never heard it mentioned before, but Google gradually amassing the ability to track your every movement on the web.

    Now, web servers have long been capable of logging every move that you make ON THEIR SERVER, but once you go to another server, they lose you. What Google is doing is (intentionally or not) bugging millions of web pages with Javascripts which are loaded from their own server.

    For those who don't understand web technology, every time a resource is loaded from a server, your browser tells that server who you are (IP and any applicable cookies) and also what page sent you to fetch this resource (referer header). So, every time your browser loads an "Ads By Gooooooooogle" advertisement script, or a creative usage of the Google Maps API, or now a "Google Analytics" image/script; your browser checks in with Google's server and says "Hi! I'm browser #2j823 and I've just visited this URL."

    As more Google resources are dumped onto web pages by enthusiastic webmasters, their "surveillance coverage" of the web grows, and, even now, it's considerable enough to give a good outline of each user's general habits and usual haunts.

    So, Slashdot, is it a good thing that a private company is taking on an ability that would be terribly controversial for the government to take on; especially when the government is just a phone call away from requisitioning that data?

    • agreed (Score:4, Insightful)

      by mgkimsal2 ( 200677 ) on Saturday January 14, 2006 @01:30PM (#14471786) Homepage
      I agree, and I touched on this topic of Google's growing ownership of data and people seeming not to care about it here [fosterburgess.com]. It was more centered on the "google wifi" proposals in the news last fall, but the idea is the same. Many people really DON'T see any harm in it, or "so what, google should be rewarded for this" type of attitude. I've met very few people who understand the importance of how much control google will have over web metadata.

      Will we see antitrust actions against google at some point? Maybe that's why they moved the analytics program to 'invite only' from 'free for all'? Imagine if MS had bought an industry leading application (urchin), rolled it in to the next Windows Update, and given it away for free. What would the reaction have been?
      • Imagine if MS had bought an industry leading application (urchin), rolled it in to the next Windows Update, and given it away for free. What would the reaction have been?

        Well I for one see a difference between forcing an application on a user (via windows upate) and allowing users to register to products at their free will.

        • Take it out of Windows Update then - just something that comes with Windows Vista Server (or whatever it'll be called). It's not being 'forced' on anyone - it's just something you get for free with Windows.
    • You raise a good point, but this is only applicable to sites with google ads, obviously.
      I only see google ads in about.. 10% of my surfing :)

    • I've never belong to the omg people are watching me through my cookies paranoia brigade. However, with the spawning of all these (very useful) Google services, I've got into the habit of using different browsers / browser profiles for different things. I don't want Google drawing conclusions (however non-evil they might be) between, for example, my emails and my search habits.

      And upon reading about Google analytics when it came out, and noticing some of my favorite sites were already using

    • What I don't know if everybody has figured out yet is that web stats give them yet another metric by which to rank sites and pages. In fact, Nielson-like ratings -- so not only do they get another tool in their ranking toolbox, they also gain in their usefulness to potential advertisers.

      Acquiring an analytics tool that they could data-mine was a very smart move.

  • Googchelon (Score:2, Interesting)

    by dbzero ( 64544 )
    Front company for the NSA?

    • I know exactly what you mean. I've worked in the directed marketing industry, using only a pittance of data compared to what Google will soon have at its disposal.

      As an informed, educated computer professional, Google is getting to scare the bejezus out of me. If Google Analytics becomes even somewhat widespread, Google will be able to track the web usage of millions of people in considerable detail. The opportunity to correlate this data with other databases, and with gmail message contents, is tremen

  • Secret Relationship Between Analytics and AdSense? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by vtechpilot ( 468543 ) on Saturday January 14, 2006 @01:08PM (#14471706)
    I don't know if anyone else has noticed but this is as good a place as any to throw out the question. I put my site on Google Analytics right after it was post on /. in November. I have also been using AdSense on the site since August or So. Oddly enough, shortly after adding Analytics to the site, AdSense revenue started dropping. Revenues are now less than half of what they were before Analytics.

    Anyone else seen that behavior or is my site just a statistical outlier?

  • Very Exciting News! (Score:5, Funny)

    by spyrral ( 162842 ) on Saturday January 14, 2006 @01:15PM (#14471725) Journal
    My Firefox tab says "Slashdot | Google Re-Opens Anal"

  • Making this service 'invite-only,' the same way Gmail was introduced, in an excellent strategy in my opinion. It creates buzz around the service because demand will exceed supply initially. it also keeps spam accounts to a minimum because after they go through and identify legitimate users and allow them access, it is generally assumed that those legitimate users will prefer to only invite their friends with legitimate purposes, due to the scarcity of invites at this stage of the program. Even though it is
    • I think slashdot submitters intentionally make the story title and/or summary misleading to trip up people like you who don't read the associated links (or even the summary for that matter). By "invite only" they mean that you can give Google your e-mail address and they will send you an e-mail when they think you are deserving of a Google Analytics account. I can verify that, as a user of Google Analytics, I do not have the ability to send invites.
  • I did not really like Google Analytics ! I was expecting a LOT from it since it is a Google product, was very disappointed.

  • I realize it was a joke... (Score:2, Informative)

    by Evro ( 18923 )
    ... but calling Google Analytics a glorified hit counter is seriously misleading, and overlooks one of its main functions: it allows the advertiser to link ad performance to conversion rate. If a particular ad generates 20,000 clicks it may appear to be more effective than one that generates only 1000 clicks. But if the ad that generates 20,000 clicks only generates 100 conversions (orders) and the ad that generates 1000 clicks leads to 200 conversions, the second ad is obviously more valuable to the adve
  • For the do it yourself crowd, I wrote a short article [imnmotion.com] on how Web developers can create custom passive monitors using a library I wrote. I haven't yet posted the other individual parts that make for a complete solution, but this is an easy way to get started with the passive client-side monitor.
  • Another great tool... is it "new"?, not really, its a "statistics" generator + adwords...

    step 1... Google search (draws millions of hits)
    step 2... Gmail (nother million hits here and there) (plus your email/data)
    step 3... Throw in google earth,picasa (more hits)
    step 4... Track users for you.

    Google may not be "Evil", but it sure in control of ALOT of information (and statistics). Keep in mind EVERYTHING hits of their servers.
    Google will be (you can quote this) the largest information holder on the

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