Google Analytics is a relatively new web analytic service based on the extremely popular Urchin web analysis software. Unlike most other new services, Google immediately release this without testing it in beta. May be they are just too confidence about their strong software based. Is it worth the effort?

Web analytics is an important component which should be in every online marketer’s toolbox. Most stats packages available from web hosting are too simple and provide only some basic information. Professional analytics software and/or services are costly to most small publishers. So when I read about Google Analytics, I immediate registered an account.

1. Registration and implementation
I had no problem during the registration process. Impelementation to my blog was easy because I have access to my blog theme. But Google failed to detect installed code for the first time. Fortunately, that was fixed less than 24 hours later.

2. First report
The initial stas report appeared about 2-3 days after implementation. Also the interface was slow, I read from forums that they were having performance problem due to sudden surge of traffic and account registrations.

A few days later, Google stopped accepting new accounts. Even existing users can’t add more profiles.

Update: On December 5th, 2005 Google finally announced they have improved the performance. Data should be available within 3 to 6 hours, and re-enabled the addition of profiles and linking of Google Analytics accounts with AdWords accounts.

3. The interface
Google Analytics user interface combines both JavaScript and Flash. It was a bit slow on my part. The performance improvement only affects it a bit.

The navigation looks good, but takes time to learn especially if you are new to different analytics terms.

4. Report
Needless to say, the report is much more comprehensive than the standard stats package that comes with my web hosting account.

You should probably use Google Analytics if you don’t depend on any stat package other than the default that comes with your hosting. Unless, of course, you have concerns about giving away too much information to Google.

The dashboard allows you to view executive summary, e-commerce summary, conversion, marketing and content summary. Other than those, you can view reports by marketing optimization, content optimization and e-commerce analysis data, of which each of them consists of many specific reports, up to more than 70 reports.

If you are currently advertising on Google AdWords, the service is also integrated into your account.

5. What is it useful for.
Google Analytics is especially good at tracking search related data. No surprise here though, as Google clearly are going for learn more about visitors behavior on a site related to search, both paid and organic.

Google seems to believe that the more webmasters understand about how their visitors behave on their site, the more they are going to advertise and spend on AdWords.

Overall, I think website owners can take advantage of this free tool, unless they have already implement their favorite analytics program and have third party service do the analysis part for them.

Those who have difficulties in interpreting the reports should read a book or two in analytics, or hire a consultant to do the analysis for them.

Link: Google Analytics.