Google has just re-branded Urchin and launched Google Analytics, a heavy-weight site tracking tool which it bought last March 29, 2005. The best thing is, it’s now free and seemlessly integrates with those running an Adwords campaign.
If you already have a Google account, you can go ahead and login at https://www.google.com/analytics to register your sites for the tracking system.
Urchin used to come with several of our servers back then, along with AWStats and Webalizer. However, Urchin logs are too large that it could very well clog up your entire hosting account, with all the detailed traffic stats it gathers and the reporting it presents.
I have disabled the built-in Urchin stats altogether on our servers, hoping that AWStats and Webalizer would be enough. But recently, both traffic stats tools are recording mostly spam referrals they’ve become useless altogether. Third-party stats like Statcounter, MapStats and MeasureMap came in handy and more useful for remote tracking.
We’ll see how everybody else fares with Google Analytics.
Update: Google didn’t expect the rush? “Thanks for stopping by. We are currently migrating existing customers to the newly improved Google Analytics service. This process will be completed later this afternoon. Please come back then to sign up for Google Analytics.”
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