Andrew's posts

30 September 2011

Google Analytics grows up and gets an income

Andrew Morris Director - Web Analytics | Read all Andrew's posts

For a few weeks rumours have been appearing on Twitter and Web Analytics blogs about major changes in Google Analytics. Finally this morning the reasons for all the chatter emerged.

First up Google has addressed one of the criticisms that we, amongst many people, have levelled in the past, which is the lack of real-time data. We find the ability to be able to react to spikes in traffic instantly a key factor along with reporting on announcements and web chats as they take place. Google now obviously agrees.

Read the full announcement

The second big announcement is the launch of a premium paid-for service cunningly titled Google Analytics Premium. Google is acting on plenty of feedback on their services over the years, with key reasons for organisations not choosing Google Analytics being:

1.    Lack of data ownership
2.    No formal service level agreements
3.    A formal SLA agreement
4.    Lack of account management and technical support

These issues have been addressed in the premium version at a flat cost of £90,000 per year for sites with up to one billion page views a month.

Read the full announcement

The cost of £90,000 per year rules the premium service out for many sites and whilst the addition of real-time data to the free version is good news it does leave most web site owners facing the same issues when considering choosing Google Analytics – unless their budget stretches to the premium version. Though I am sure some site owners out there with six and seven figure bills from top end web analytics vendors will be very excited by the developments!

Any statements made in these blog posts are the views of the blogger and do not necessarily represent the views of The Group.