Google is offering webmasters a full-featured, powerful analytics package from Urchin to determine how many people are visiting their sites, to view the source of referrals to your site and what they're clicking on. Google Analytics is the latest version of Urchin On Demand that can also track user clicks in Flash objects and Javascript code.
A Google Account is required to login into Google Analytics. If you're an AdWords advertiser, you can also sign up for Analytics from within your AdWords account. Analytics' free version is limited to 5 million pageviews a month but the limit is is removed if you're also an active AdWords publisher.
The urchin.com website is now redirecting to google.com/analytics/. Google Analytics is a hosted web analytics service, and is not currently available as a software application. The Google Analytics software product is currently in development and a release date has not yet been set.
Once you submit your website details, Google Analytics will provide a small Javascript code snippet (like Google Adsense javascipt code) that you can insert anywhere in the webpages that you want to track.
Google Analytics will itself check to see that the tracking code has been installed correctly on the home page of your site - once you've created a new profile, the Tracking Status will display a warning, "Tracking status unknown," until the system detects the code. Google Analytics uses a first-party cookie and JavaScript code to collect information about visitors and to track your advertising campaign data.
Google Analytics will also put significant pricing pressure on vendors. Google Analytics could hurt companies like Statcounter, Tracksy, Web Trends, Web Side Story and Click Tracks, and others focusing on the small to medium-size business market. These vendors will only be able to compete with Google Analytics (Urchin) if they provide better professional services and consulting units.
Google Analytics is not just for Adwords advertisers, it is a complete website traffic monitoring tool. But it is painfully slow at the moment. Google Analytics reporting is currently undergoing maintenance and will be available shortly. Your site traffic is being logged and you will be able to see the data after system maintenance has concluded.
Check it out here - Google Analytics
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