Remember when Google acquired Urchin?

Well, it looks like they will be using some of that software to power Google Analytics, offering free site stats for everyone by inserting a javascript onto the site’s pages.

Google Analytics tells you everything you want to know about how your visitors found you and how they interact with your site. You’ll be able to focus your marketing resources on campaigns and initiatives that deliver ROI, and improve your site to convert more visitors.

Hosted services provided by such companies as Omniture, Fireclick, and Webtrends provide this service for a lot of money so providing this service to the smaller sites is great for those companies who otherwise may not be able to afford them. Are these web analytics companies worried? Well, you get 5 million pageviews per month included…but ti jumps up to unlimited pageviews if you have an Adsense account in good standing, according to the TOS. Larger companies will most likely continue working with these other providers since they often want all sorts of customizations (not to mention the fact that they are probably bound to multi-year contracts). However, the biggest issue high traffic sites face is the service level/response times from these stats providers (you don’t want a javascript include hanging your page during high traffic times). Although Google has one of the larger data farms, I don’t know how many servers would be dedicated to the urchin software and the TOS also provides no guarantees for the service level.

I wonder how they plan to use the data or if it will affect your SEO placement (more traffic and more pageviews per user may indicate a better, relevant site):

Google and its wholly owned subsidiaries may retain and use, subject to the terms of its Privacy Policy (located at http://www.google.com/privacy.html , or such other URL as Google may provide from time to time), information collected in Your use of the Service.

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