For those Urchin fans out there, Google has lifted the beta designation from the Website analytics software that it acquired back in March, 2005. The technology behind Urchin is also what powers Google Analytics, but Urchin itself remains server-installed software for companies that want to keep it behind their firewalls. It costs $3,000 and, um, Google Analytics is free.
Google made no updates to Urchin for years after the acquisition, then finally launched v.6 last October.
I guess some people have not heard that software, even enterprise software, is moving to the cloud.
There is nothing free. Google analytics’s availability is spotty, methodology unclear, and stats do not agree with results obtained directly from the source. I would say that if the analytics important to you, it is better to pay for quality. The Adobe Air is using Google data through API and as such is just as useless.
While Google Urchin is a premium utility for tracking site visitors, I think Google Analytics has sure acquired a lots of webmasters attention on the internet. Its features and ease of use with the free tag surely makes it a good option for the webmasters to track the visitors and vice versa.
Urchin is not free ($2995 license fee) and requires experienced technical staff for installation. Only benefit is that, it can provide a high level of control and customization since it is housed on your own server. I think it is only for large sites having skilled technical staff. For medium level sites it would be better to go with Google Analytics.
Just letting you guys know I just tried to come here and this is the error I got:
Error 503 Service Unavailable
Error talking to backend
Guru Meditation:
XID: 1659472423
Varnish
I tried to come here again and the site loaded. Dont know code myself so I dont really know what it means.
In other words, for $3000 Google is willing to let you keep your server stats private. Pretty affordable if you ask me.
There is also the fact that Google Analytics is not ‘free’ for high profile sites since they require Google Ads (or did)…
I use Urchin at work, and I can’t say I’m too impressed. The interface is clunky, especially for a $3000 piece of software.
Guys…there is a big difference between Urchin and Google Analytics. Uchin runs server side, so the information is a lot more accurate and comes straight from your server logs. Analytics is javascript code placed on your website, and usually at the bottom of the site. So if that page doesn’t load completely, or someone clicks on an image before the page loads, Google Analytics will not register that user. Just one example.
We have been using Urchin for years (older version) and like it a lot. It reports more information and behavior and is more accurate. A lot of the professional analytics programs cost money. Webtrends, Omniture etc. and for a serious site, they are valuable tools. (Omniture even integrates with DoubleClick)
Now if you just blog or do not get a lot of traffic or revenue, by all means stick with Site Meter or Google Analytics.
$3k is nothing. We use Ominture at work and it’’s friggn $54k a year for 4 websites. Totally not worth the price difference over google analytics. Both Omniture and Webside Story’s Hitbox both run javascript client side, not server side.
Analytics is not more inaccurate than other JS based solutions (see http://www.ston...gust-2007.shtml for a good comparison). I think combined with the Website Optimizer you got a analytics package from Google thats beats solution that cost 10k and more (at the price of having Google reading your data).
Now that Yahoo is considering giving IndexTools away for free it starts to get really interesting, and im glad i do not make analytics software for a living