Google Analytics (a.k.a. Urchin soft) made free

Google has now re-branded Urchin to Google Analytics presenting users with better ways to ?understand and influence visitor behavior and generate a higher ROI on marketing initiatives?. Yes folks! It?s offering a free hosted web analytics service, in hopes that advertisers, publishers and website owners will spend time understanding how people find their websites, navigate through them and convert on the goals of the site. With the free service, Google hopes it helps people spend money on their search marketing campaigns rather than on measurement. This is going to have a huge impact on both the search marketing and the web analytics industries. Draw your own conclusions.

But how much is really free? Google Analytics will allow you to track up to 5 million pageviews per month, no questions asked, no fees charged. So you have a BIG MONSTER website, then all they request is that you have at least one active Adwords account with an active campaign and spend $1 if you want, that?s all it takes. No more pageview caps. I?m sure they hope you spend much more than that when you see all the tracking benefits.

What?s more in this move, Google Analytics now allows integration with AdWords to better monitor ?ROI metrics automatically without having to import cost data or tag keywords?, as well as tracking all of your other internet marketing initiatives as well. When you subscribe to it, you will see it as a new tab under your AdWords account. It now has executive, marketer, and webmaster dashboards for view quick summaries of ?traffic, e-commerce, and conversion trends without hunting through reports.? Here is what else it offers:

• Reporting interface accessible directly from the google.com/analytics website if you don?t have an Adwords account
• Advanced visitor segmentation with over 80 web analytics reports
• Ability to track up to 50 websites within your account
• Site overlay
• Funnel visualization
• GeoTargeting with a cool map that shows where your traffic comes from
• It?s available in 16 languages: Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Portuguese, Russian, Spanish, Swedish and English.
• And much more?

For those worried on privacy concerns, this is what they say, ?Google takes the trust people place in us very seriously, and we are committed to safeguarding the privacy of your data. We understand that web analytics data is sensitive, so we accord it the ironclad protection it deserves. Google Analytics is subject to the same industry leading privacy policy as all Google services: http://www.google.com/privacypolicy.html"

On a personal note, I?m also very excited with the steps Google is making because my consulting firm, iHispanic Marketing Group, is proud to announce that Google Analytics has chosen us as one among other Client Service and Support Consultants to service the global Hispanic market. With this strategic alliance we are committed to delivering professional services for training, advanced support, and expert web analytics consulting to executives, marketing managers and webmasters in both Spanish and English. Our loyalty we?ve had to Urchin and to our clients have demonstrated great rewards. Google Analytics will be a fun ride moving forward to continue building leadership with the Hispanic market for search engine marketing and internet strategy.

For discussion on this topic, you?re welcome to share your thoughts in the SearchEngineWatch Forum?s thread:Urchin Now Google Analytics, Now Free.

I'd like to see you, and of you, write a package like this and make it live for the whole fucking world and not have _any_ problems.