Update: It’s official.
Rumors, rumors. Google is preparing to launch version 6 of Urchin this morning at the emetrics conference in Washington DC, according to multiple sources. This is the server side analytics product, not Urchin as a service, which is now called Google Analytics.
Recently, cries for an update, any update, to Urchin have reached a fever pitch. Google acquired Urchin in March 2005 and has regularly updated Google Analytics since relaunching it in November 2005. But the server side product has been stuck at v.5.7, and people have long since wondered if it was going to be simply discontinued.
If what we are hearing is correct, Google’s Brett Crosby will announce the product at 10:30 AM EST at the conference. No word on what updates are coming, but Urchin users will be happy just to know the product is still alive.
Look for an update on the Google Analytics blog.
Thanx for the update Michael. Also when it comes to Google, rumours are usually true so I am pretty sure this is something that is going to happen. Also it would be exciting to see what new things google will be providing now
It’s simply a terrible thing when “free software” isn’t updated with all the latest and greatest. For a change – I side with Google.
about time !
google is my main man….
@iHero, I don’t think urchin is free. There were companies with support contracts that were left out in the cold after the acquisition. Google on there own website only provide a 30 day demo license for Urchin, with a full license being only available form their partners. They have also indicated that version 6 is definitely not going to be free. When you pay upwards of US$10000 for a product it would be nice if it was updated more often than every 2.5 years.
Urchin aka GA is not free on the server side. We paid $5,000 for it 3 months before Google bought them in 2005. Back then version 6 was due “any day now”.
Its better than nothing for the Urchin Community.
http://blogkatt.blogspot.com
Here is the FAQ page – and help center
http://www.goog.../urchin6/?hl=en
http://blogosco...rum/110785.html
Here is the FAQ page – and help center
http://www.goog.../urchin6/?hl=en
I’d be watching Avinash Kaushik’s blog sometime this week for a full update – given that he’s at emetrics this week and is also the Analytics Evangelist for Google. I also think that if people were paying anywhere from $5K to $10 for Urchin, why wouldnt you at least consider moving to an enterprise solution such as Omniture?
@Simon Chen
Why not more to Omniture? Well, we evaluated both Urchin and Omniture when looking for a web analytics solution. We chose Urchin because it costs $5-10K whereas Omniture was somewhere around $40-60K. That seems like a pretty good reason to me…
A friend of mine at eMetrics said this was announced – can someone get Google to post the official announcement somewhere?
Brett just announced it at Emetrics — the beta is here! Anyone interested in becoming a beta tester can apply on our site:
http://www.actualmetrics.com
This will make a lot of people happy. One negative thing that this does is highlight how neglected the server side analytics platform was. This was in testing over 2 years ago and you would imagine that if Google didn’t purchase Urchin that they would be on version 7 or 8 by now.
On that same note I would imagine that the javascript side of things would be nowhere near as developed as it is today had Google not stepped in. Google opened up analytics to the average guy and made it more accessible to all. Maybe with the success of GA they can then actually start to sell more of the server side now.
why pay for the service, I would rather stick to google analytics
http://vidsonly.blogspot.com
Urchin, Urchin, U R C H I N !
How long does it take you people to catch on?
http://fakestev...er.blogspot.com
Well, a lot of adblockers are blocking the Google Urchin javascript — last I checked, anyway.
So, having a server-side product might present more accurate visitor statistics and all that.
There’s a big batch of updates to Google Analytics also announced today – a whole new set of sub-page event tracking, outbound link tracking, refinement for reporting on sub-page query strings so that you can do analysis of searches coming from within your site, and a new javascript file to go with it.
Two days late, but all I can say is it’s about @(&^(#$&*^@!! time. Urchin’s still a a very platform, but this update is LOOOOOOOONG overdue and yet another reason I have a very intense love/hate relationship with Google.