Posts from the ‘Google’ Category
2012 promises to be a very busy year in all things digital, but, as with any annum, there will be just a handful of big, memorable trends. Here, I’ve collected five such movements that are likely to make a big impact in our technologically-enhanced lives.
Augmented Reality
It’s now in games, location apps, business cards and coffee shops and could start showing up in cars and even eyeglasses. Augmented Reality, which puts a virtual view on top of your real world, is really just a cool way of saying, “Reality with Style.” Instead of simply viewing your apartment through your phone, you’re playing Star Wars Arcade Falcon Gunner on top of it. Instead looking up a restaurant in your neighborhood, you’re using Yelp to see its location and reviews for it and other restaurants right on top of your on-screen view of the street. 2012 will mark the beginning of exponential growth for Mobile Augmented Reality (MAR).
According to a report from Visiongain, 25% of all app downloads will feature some sort of augmented reality. Though adoption hinges on more powerful, high-speed and camera-ready mobile devices, it’s clear to me that the majority of smartphones and tablets in end-users’ hands next year will be 3G-to-4G-ready, high-def, large-screen devices with not one, but two multi-megapixel cameras. Trust me, by 2013, you’ll be hard-pressed to find anyone who hasn’t at least tried augmented reality.
The Micro-Payment Economy
App manufacturers are not the only ones who can make money selling tiny wares and incremental upgrades. The barrier to entry for starting your own small business has been effectively knocked down by a variety of online merchants who are willing to hawk your wares for next to nothing. In truth, the merchandise isn’t entirely yours. In fact, these companies are often just selling your idea on top of their wares and you get a tiny slice for each sale, or for when the numbers of sales reaches a certain threshold.
Sites like RedBubble do everything for the artist; all they need to do is upload the content. RedBubble will, for example, make the T-Shirt with your art, sell it for you, manage the distribution and, of course, collect payment. The site lets you set the price above their fixed price. Yes, you could add as much as you want onto a $16 T-shit, but most smart sellers know this means they won’t sell a single garment. Instead, you add 1%-to-5% (maybe 10% if you’re feeling strong) and then promote the dickens out of your product on the site and through various social networks.
RedBubble is just one of many destinations popping up to help the aspiring entrepreneur. They join established platforms like Lulu (self-publish books), and YouTube. YouTube has been inviting videographers into the commerce tent for years, letting them add AdSense accounts to popular videos and then sitting back and watching the pennies roll in.
As the economy sputters along, look for more and more of the sites helping you sell almost anything you can imagine and making you a “fortune”–one micro payment at a time.
The Rise of the UltraBook
Tablets dominate the tech conversation, but that doesn’t mean the PC is dead. No, it’s alive and well, but in a form that will closely mimic some of the best features of tablets. I don’t have numbers yet, but I’m betting Desktop PCs were not big sellers this holiday season. Laptops may have done a little better, but who among you was willing to give junior an end-of-life netbook instead of a sexy, touch-screen tablet? (I’m imagining no one raising their hands).
A term coined by Intel, Ultrabooks describe exquisitely thin and light, yet pleasingly powerful laptops. Think MacBook Air and you get the idea. No, they don’t have touch screens or apps (though that’s changing, too) and Ultrabooks usually have just one HD camera. Still, with just a little more heft and girth than your garden-variety iPad, an Ultrabook adds a full-sized keyboard and far more powerful components. In other words, they’re perfectly designed for getting real work done, but no one will be embarrassed to carry one around. 2012 will witness an explosion of these devices as manufacturers pin on them their last best hopes for regaining consumer computing interest.
Social/Digital Exhaustion
Facebook will break the 1 billion user mark in 2012, but its numbers have flattened out in the U.S. Twitter is growing; it may have as many 450 million users, but no one knows how many people are really active users. Google+ is growing steadily, but is still well behind the two most established networks and much of the public is unaware of its existence. There is the now persistent, with good reason, backlash against mobile phone usage in cars and on streets.
In general, more and more people seem to be reevaluating their social and digital existence. Even the SOPA battle is revealing some unforeseen schisms. The Stop Online Piracy Act is a bad idea, not because piracy is good, but because of the plan for enforcement is wrong and dangerous. That said, no one who creates content can deny that the digital revolution hasn’t forced them to rethink how they create, sell and distribute content. There are no easy answers here and 2012 will be a year of introspection; one where we possibly rewrite the rules of content, copyrights and social interactions.
Mobile Chip Wars
The tech industry is gearing up for a rather intense battle—on a micro scale. With ARM-based CPUs in virtually all of today’s tablets and handsets, Intel, the dominant system CPU manufacturer, has no presence in the mobile space. It’s a situation the company promises to change in 2012 with Medfield—its rethinking of the Atom CPU (popular in netbooks). Meanwhile a consortium of Pacific Rim manufacturers have just banded together to produce new mobile CPUs for phones and tablets.
These efforts may not mean much, though, as Texas Instruments, Qualcomm, Motorola, Marvell, Nvidia and others all license the ARM architecture and show (along with the hardware partners) little interest in switching to a new or once-established platform. Even Microsoft is developing Windows 8 to run on ARM-based CPUs in addition to traditional Wintel machines.
What do you think? Are these the right trends? Will there be other defining movements in 2012? Chose the biggest trend in our poll and then let’s talk about it in the comments.
by Lance Ulanoff, via Mashable
Most online marketers can tell you that the core of any SEO strategy is to optimize site content for search engines and build a network of high-authority backlinks. While search engines have long been the de facto method of navigating the web, that tide is beginning to shift. The sustained growth of social media feeds as a channel for content sharing has caused marketers to question how social signals influence search.
Perhaps the most persuasive evidence that Facebook and Twitter augment search rankings comes from SEOmoz. In April, they published some insightful correlation data demonstrating the degree to which links shared on social networks correspond with improved search engine rankings.
Source: SEOmoz
This analysis uses the Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient to measure how strongly Google rankings are associated with quantity and types of links on social channels. The data represented in green is most germane to this topic because it controls for exogenous factors, such as the possibility that pages frequently shared on social networks rank well simply because they are good predictors of pages with lots of quality backlinks from the rest of the web.
SEOmoz found that Facebook shares are more strongly correlated with high search engine rankings than Facebook Likes or Twitter shares. While a correlation coefficient of 0.17 isn’t usually considered strong in a statistical analysis, it is noteworthy here given the number of exogenous variables at play that also influence search rankings. The data confirms that shares on Facebook likely have a positive influence on SEO, and Facebook shares are more influential than Likes or shares on Twitter.
For search marketers and social media strategists seeking to translate these findings into business strategies, consider these takeaways:
- Expect social feeds to continue to exert greater influence on search engine rankings.
As social networks become a more prominent channel for information discovery on the web, search engine algorithms will adapt to reflect the evolving ways in which people find and consume content. Google and Bing have already experimented with incorporating social feeds into search results, but their next evolution may involve significant algorithm changes to mirror rankings with trending content on social channels. - Prioritize user-generated contextual social sharing ahead of Likes.
The Like button is a valuable tool to extend your brand reach on Facebook, but user-generated social shares produce better engagement rates and correlate more strongly with high search engine rankings. To drive more backlinks to your site and increased utilization of social sharing, ensure that the option to share is strategically integrated across multiple user touch points – from comments, to purchases or published reviews, and event-based triggers such as achieving a game high score. - Make your content discoverable within social feeds as well as search.
Even if your brand boasts a large stable of fans and followers, your Facebook posts may not be achieving as many impressions as expected due to EdgeRank, Facebook’s news feed algorithm. Because consumers interact with their friends more often than with brands on Facebook, shared content from peers yields more impressions and clicks than posts from your brand page. To maximize click-through rates on shared content, ensure that your social sharing tool incorporates rich media such as thumbnail images into the activity object, and enable users to personalize the message shared to their stream.
by: Michael Olson, via Janrain
Social media continues to move forward toward business integration, a trend that I identified last year. In a joint study from Booz Allen and social platform developer Buddy Media, 57 percent of businesses surveyed plan to increase social media spending, while 38 percent of CEO’s label social as a high priority.
I was also partially accurate in predicting that Google would “strike back” in 2011. They did, with Google Plus, a formidable initiative that acts as Google’s “social layer” to the Web. Part social network and part social search, Google Plus has industry observers scratching their heads, wondering if Facebook will be given a run for their money or if the service evolves into something complimentary in a highly social Web.
I had one big swing-and-miss on Facebook’s intrusion in the location-based services war. While Facebook still supports location tracking in a number of ways, it has not put Foursquare out of business. Foursquare still enjoys a niche audience of highly active participants who enjoy telling the world where they are and post pictures to prove it. It is however worth noting that Facebook recently acquired location based network Gowalla, so continue to watch this space.
So what can we expect in 2012 in a world that seems to grow ever connected by the hour? Here are six predictions to ponder, in no particular order:
Convergence Emergence. For a glimpse into how social will further integrate with “real life,” we can look at what Coca Cola experimented with all the way back in 2010. Coke created an amusement park where participants could “swipe” their RFID-equipped wristbands at kiosks, which posted to their Facebook account what they were doing and where. Also, as part of a marketing campaign, Domino’s Pizza posted feedback — unfiltered feedback — on a large billboard in Times Square, bringing together real opinions from real people pulled from a digital source and displayed in the real world. These types of “trans-media” experiences are likely to define “social” in the year to come.
The Cult of Influence. In much the same way that Google has defined a system that rewards those who produce findable content, there is a race on to develop a system that will reward those who wield the most social influence. One particular player has emerged, Klout, determined to establish their platform as the authority of digital influence. Klout’s attempt to convert digital influence intobusiness value underscores a much bigger movement which we’ll continue to see play out in the next year. To some degree everyone now has some digital influence (not just celebrities, academics, policy makers or those who sway public opinion). But for the next year, the cult of influence becomes less about consumer plays like Klout and more about the tools and techniques professionals use to “score” digital influence and actually harness, scale and measure the results of it.
Gamification Nation. No we’re not taking about video games. Rather, game-like qualities are emerging within a number of social apps in your browser or mobile device. From levels, to leaderboards, to badges or points, rewards for participation abound. It’s likely that the trend will have to evolve given how competition for our time and attention this gaming creates. Primarily, gamification has been used in consumer settings, but look for it in other areas from HR, to government, healthcare and even business management. Perhaps negotiating your next raise will be tied to your position on the company’s digital leaderboard.
Social Sharing. Ideas, opinions, media, status updates are all part of what makes social media a powerful and often disruptive force. The media industry was one of the first to understand this, adding sharing options to content, which led to more page views and better status in search results. What comes next in social sharing is more closely aligned with e-commerce or web transactions. For example, Sears allows a user to share a product or review with their networks directly from the site. Sharing that vacation you just booked, or recommending a product, or service from any site to a social network is where sharing goes next. We probably don’t know what we are willing to share until we see the option to do it.
Social Television. For many of us, watching television is already a social act, whether it’s talking to the person next to you, or texting, tweeting, and calling friends about what you’re watching. But television is about to become a social experience in a bigger and broader sense. The X Factor nowallows voting via Twitter and highlights other social promotions, which encourages viewers to tap social networks while they watch. Another way media consumption is becoming social comes from a network called Get Glue which acts as something of a Foursquare for media. Participants can “check-in” to their favorite shows (or other forms of media) and collect stickers to tell the world what programs they love. Watch for more of this this year as ratings rise for socially integrated shows.
The Micro Economy. Lastly as we roll into 2012, watch for a more social approach to solving business problems through a sort of micro-economy. Kickstarter gives anyone with a project, the opportunity to get that initiative funded by those who choose to (and patrons receive something in return). A crowdsourcing platform for would be inventors called Quirky lets the best product ideas rise to the top and then helps them get produced and sold while the “inventor” takes a cut. Air BnB turns homes into hotels and travelers into guests, providing both parties with an opportunity to make and save money. These examples may point to a new future reality where economic value is directly negotiated and exchanged between individuals over institutions.
These are a few emerging trends which come to mind. As with anything, looking to the past often gives us clues for what may come in the future. Please weigh in with your thoughts: where do you see “social” going in 2012?
by David Armano, via Harvard Business Review
Google Analytics is about to get a whole lot more visual, thanks to the launch of a new feature, Flow Visualizations.
The new feature was announced by Google SVP of ads Susan Wojcicki at the Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco. It will launch later today for all Google Analytics users.
Flow Visualizations is a dynamic way to view and experience your Google Analytics data. It utilizes the lens of a Sankey diagram, a specific type of flow diagram. Flow Visualizations allow sites to drill into user behavior based on location, browser, user type and many other variables.
The key to Flow Visualizations, though, is its ability to analyze how visitors are using a website. These visualizations allow website administrators to figure out where people are visiting, how many people stay on their site, how many people visit a site’s shopping cart and more.
Wojcicki said the inspiration for the new product actually came from a Sankey diagram from the 19th century, describing the marching movements of Napoleon and his army over the course of time.
Check out a photo from the Web 2.o Summit below:
At a time when Google defies the global economic slowdown by posting a 26% rise in net profits for the last quarter, it may seem curious to challenge the behemoth’s future. As Larry Page, Google’s co-founder and chief executive, declared “we had a great quarter”, before going onto highlight the progress made with Google+: “People are flocking into Google+ at an incredible rate and we are just getting started.”
Amongst analysts there is palpable excitement that Google may challenge Facebook’s dominance and this is before one considers the incredible success of the Android platform and various other projects, applications and revenue lines.
But. And there is a but. What about “Search”? Larry Page once described the “perfect search engine” as something that “understands exactly what you mean and gives you back exactly what you want.” Equally, one of Google’s core principles is, “It’s best to do one thing really, really well.” That in mind, all the superlatives gushing from the world’s financial press suddenly appear misplaced.
That’s because despite being used by hundreds of millions of people every day, Google has not mastered Search. The sector as a 
whole remains in its infancy. Well over a decade since inception, it is clear that Google (and every other popular search engine for that matter) has not mastered even in the basics of semantic search: it remains completely unable to understand users’ queries or web pages (Google’s main information source).
If it did, it would respond with an answer to user’s questions. Instead, users are forced to spend time browsing several blue links that may or may not provide the answer to their questions. This mismatch of supply with demand presents itself clearly as the first words of every search: “About x,xxx,xxx results (0.yz seconds)”. So what?
This fundamental flaw in Google’s core business looks set to become more challenging with the exponential growth in Search via mobile handsets. Users do not want results determined by the Google parameters (relevance, freshness, comprehensive and speed). They just want answers.
Almost all mobile handset users seek local information, and a lot of it: questions around restaurants; shopping; sport; food; travel and weather dominate. Mobile information seeking is action-oriented and users want what they are looking for directly. Browsing hundreds of web pages from a mobile screen is not practicable or desirable. Information is for the here (contextual) and now (immediate). Statistics-based, index- powered search fails this mission.
The challenge in Search has moved on from “indexing the world’s information” to enabling greater access to information. No longer is the consumer concerned by the availability of information but rather the fast simple retrieval of it. This trend is acknowledged by Google. When asked what the perfect search engine is, Google’s Marissa Meyer replied:
It would be a machine that could answer that question, really. It would be one that could understand speech, questions, phrases, what entities you’re talking about, concepts. It would be able to search all of the world’s information, [find] different ideas and concepts, and bring them back to you in a presentation that was really informative and coherent.
Sound familiar?
Last week also saw the technology world aflame with news of the latest iPhone arrival. Much to the dismay of many, it looks identical to the last Cupertino release. But as commentators, reviewers and the fortunate few who found themselves at the front of Apple Shops around the world discovered, the iPhone 4S includes a remarkable new software application called Siri: in Apple’s own words, “your wish, is its command.”
The user can “ask Siri to do things just by talking the way you talk. Siri understands what you say, knows what you mean, and even talks back.” What Siri does is analyze unstructured “natural language” queries and deliver results in ways that are “actionable.” This is “Search” as it should be: ask a question, receive an answer.
Q: “Is traditional web search dying?”
A: “Yes. And fast.”
By: Alliot Cole, via Forbes (Parmy Olson)
The Current State Of Social Media: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn & Google+ [INFOGRAPHIC]
October 11, 2011
bridgenine
The social media adoption rate continues to grow at a staggering pace as the big four networks – Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and Google+ – gobble up the attention and man-hours of brands and users alike.
Facebook recently announced they had passed 800 million active users. Twitter has at least 200 million registered profiles (more than 254 million, by my count). LinkedIn has 64 million users in North America alone. And still wet-behind-the-ears Google+ picked up 10 million users in about two weeks.
This infographic from creative agency One Lily looks at the state of social media today.
for larger image, click twice
By Shea Bennett
Google’s display network can bring you tremendous amounts of clicks and conversions if used correctly. If it is not used correctly, you can quickly spend mass amounts of money and have nothing to show for it.
A couple of years ago, I wrote an article on how to manage the display network so you can spend most of your money on sites that are bringing in quality traffic. This is a quick graphic of the workflow that I still use today.
- The Discovery Campaign is one of your lower daily budgets, and its goal is to find good placements where you want to spend more money.
- The Placements Campaign is one of your higher budgets as it only contains sites that are helping you reach your overall goals.
While I find this workflow very useful, the overall problem is when do you decide to block placements?
In your AdWords account, the only data you can see for any placement is conversions and conversion rates. The problem with so little data is that if you wait until you have enough statistically significant data to make a decision, you will never find all of the good placements, and you will have spent too much money on bad ones.
There is another way to gain insight into placements with Google Analytics that can help determine whether a site is sending you quality traffic.
Evaluating Placements With Google Analytics
To have access to this data, you need to link your Google Analytics account to your AdWords account.
Next, navigate to the placements information under the AdWords reports (found under traffic sources).
If you have goals set up, then you can sort by the goal completions, conversion rates and other data points to find the sites that are doing well for you.
While this data is useful for adding placements, it can also be useful for finding placements that you want to block even if you don’t have statistical data.
Sort Placements By Bounce Rates
Instead of trying to find sites that you want to add as placements, examine bounce rates to find sites where the traffic is so poor, you don’t want to wait for statistical data.
In this case, we have a handful of sites that have sent more than 18 visitors and have a 100% bounce rate. No one from any of those sites has even gone to a second page, therefore, we will often block these even though we don’t have statistically significant data.
Please note, you don’t want to just block sites if their bounce rates are 100%. You should also double-check the ad copy and landing pages to make sure the offers are relevant for that site. If you consistently see high bounce rates for your display campaigns, then you might need to change the offer and landing page before deciding to block placements.
Just remember, a bounce in Google Analytics is a visitor who only went to a single page and then left your site. If someone gets to your landing page, picks up the phone and calls you, finishes an order over the phone and then leaves your site, they will be counted as a bounce even if they spent 20 minutes on the phone with you.
Create Interaction Goals
A quick way of seeing what sites are bringing in good versus poor traffic is to create interaction goals within Google Analytics. With Google Analytics, you can create goals based upon time on site or page views per visit.
If you create goals with these types of metrics, then you can easily examine what sites are not meeting your basic minimum interaction and then block those sites that are underperforming.
Conversely, if you find that sites are bringing in visitors that are spending several minutes on your site, you shouldn’t block those sites until you have enough clicks to determine whether those visitors will eventually convert.
By using interaction goals, you can gain another level of insight into the placements where you are spending money, so you can make better decisions about blocking the sites or spending more money on the sites to gather more data.
If you have various types of goals on your site, I would recommend splitting out these types of goals by goal set. You might have one goal set that is all revenue events, and another one that is site interaction. By splitting these different types of goals out by goal set, you can see one tab of just interaction goals, and another tab of just revenue goals. That way your revenue goal events will not be polluted by site interaction events and vice versa.
Conclusion
Overall, I like Google’s display network. There is a lot of traffic and conversions to be had from managing it correctly. However, if managed incorrectly, the display network can be a money pit. Therefore, you do need a system for managing the display network so it will perform for you.
However, the patience and money required to always have statistically relevant data is beyond what most AdWords advertisers have. Therefore, when you see sites that have several visits and 100% bounce rates, feel free to block them quickly. When you see sites that have some visitors, and those visitors are spending time on your site, you should be more patient in determining whether the site will eventually be a converting one for you.
By using Google Analytics to examine your AdWords data, you can go beyond just examining conversion rates to also determining interaction rates and gaining another viewpoint into the placement sites where you are spending your money, so you can spend your budget as wisely as possible.
By: Brad Geddes, via Search Engine Land
For social media marketers it must be about monetizing their social media activities. Part of the inspiration for this approach comes from Wilson Kerr of Unbound Commerce. David Carter of Awareness and their Social Funnel ebook laid the groundwork.
I watch social media marketers in all markets struggle with this issue. So I decided to pick one case study each from B2B and B2C. I’ve intentionally chosen small, not terribly well known companies. It may sound easy for Dell to make sales with its Twitter program and Taco Bell to sell chalupas and burritos with coupons distributed on its Facebook page, although it’s less easy than it sounds. But my point is that small companies, even individuals, can do important things in social media if they keep their eyes on the prize—monetizing their activities.
The biggest monetization opportunity in B2B is far and away the generation of qualified leads. Breaking Point is a cyber security firm who says its products “harden the resiliency of vulnerable converged networks and train cyber warriors” to prevent and deter cyber attacks. Are your eyes glazing over already? It’s incredibly important but at first glance it may not seem to be a candidate for social media marketing. Using a corporate blog, Twitter and LinkedIn accounts and a revamped PR strategy, they joined in the online conversation, staking out a position as a respected industry source. After 6 months, 75% of their leads were coming from the inbound traffic generated by these social media activities. Their blog is well organized—a video, a list of topics, the appropriate social media chicklets, and posts that only an IT security professional could love. That is their target audience, after all! Read the details and 5 other excellent B2B case studies in the HubSpot/Marketing Sherpa presentation.
Depending on your age and gender, you may be equally unmoved by the funky shoes that Canadian B2C entrepreneur John Fluevog sells online and from a growing number of retail stores in Canada and the US. According to Australian marketer Ginger, whose blog is credited with this captivating image, Fluevog reported that sales increased 40% in 2009, the year of their entry into social media marketing. If you search the corporate name, John Fluevog Boots & Shoes Ltd., you’ll find an array of social media activities including reviews and a lot of local marketing using Google’s Places. If you look at their Facebook wall, you see a few administrator posts but mostly customers showing off their shoes and loving them. On their Twitter page they cross promote offers seen on the Facebook page and actively respond to customer questions and issues. This nicely integrated social media program takes time, but not a lot of money. It’s within reach of any small business.
by: Mary Lou Roberts, via Technorati
After quietly testing in Brazil, Spanish-speaking Latin America, Spain, and Portugal, Google will roll out a new algorithm globally that gives more weight to landing page quality when it comes to AdWords Quality Score. This means ads with landing pages that Google deems to be most relevant to the query will be able to rank higher for lower cost-per-click bids.
“What we’ve seen is that there are ads available in the auction that are as good a quality as the top ads. But the landing pages — the merchant sites, the advertiser landing pages — are of much higher quality than the ads that we see at the top of our auction,” Jonathan Alferness, director of product management on Google’s ad quality team told me. This, says Alferness, means the user experience isn’t what it could be. Hence the change to give more weight to landing page quality. “In the end, we believe that this will result in better quality experience for the users.”
Landing page quality has long been a factor in Google AdWords, but more as a negative signal. If an advertiser’s landing page was particularly terrible or misleading, advertisers could have their ads rejected or their accounts suspended or revoked — depending on how bad the policy violation was. The new change will assign landing page quality a positive value, incentivizing advertisers to make sure the landing page’s keywords and content are closely aligned with the keywords for which they’re bidding. Ads with high landing page quality will get a “strong boost” upward in the auction, according to Alferness.
Alferness says Google will crawl the landing pages associated with every ad and make a determination as to its quality.
“What we always ask our advertisers to focus on is relevance — choose a landing page or site experience that is both relevant to the keywords that you’re targeting and also a good experience for end users,” said Alferness. “This is just continuing to sort of push on those best practices. I gives us the ability to really reward those advertisers that have been doing this, whose landing pages really are some of the best in our systems.”
The change will roll out in the next week or two. Advertisers may see some variations in ad position and keyword Quality Score at first, but things should settle down within a couple of weeks, according to Google.
By Pamela Parker via Search Engine Land
Google has developed a paid version of its Analytics website usage monitoring service that offers better performance, more sophisticated features and broader technical support than the free product, the company said on Friday.
Analytics Premium is designed for sites with very heavy traffic that need “extra processing power” behind their analytics software so that they can collect more data, perform more complex analysis and generate more granular reports, Google said.
The paid version of Analytics will also feature advanced service offerings for things like custom implementations and around-the-clock technical support, the company said in a blog post. Google also offers service level agreements for Analytics Premium.
While developing Analytics Premium, Google worked with some of its biggest Analytics users, including Travelocity and Gucci. The service is available in the U.S., Canada and the U.K. for an undisclosed annual fee. Companies can sign up for it directly with Google or through Analytics resellers.
Google Analytics used to be a paid service back when it was called Urchin on Demand, but after Google acquired the company in 2005, it made it a free product.
Google’s decision to offer Urchin on Demand as a free product rocked the website analytics market at the time, since most vendors charged for their wares. Urchin on Demand, for example, cost US$199 per month.
Since acquiring Urchin Software, Google has continued to develop and sell an on-premise version of the software, which in its most recent version — Urchin 7 — costs $9995 in the U.S.
However, Google from the start has encouraged customers to use Analytics, whose software is hosted by Google in its data centers in a software-as-a-service cloud model.
It’s interesting to see Google come around after six years and reintroduce a paid version of the cloud-hosted product to the market for heavy-duty users who rely on Analytics to constantly evaluate the effectiveness of ad campaigns or the popularity of website content. The decision may in part reflect the increased importance websites play in businesses, and the need for companies to closely track usage to fine-tune marketing campaigns, e-commerce initiatives and content strategies.
Google said on Friday that it will continue to develop and enhance the free version of Analytics.
By Juan Carlos Perez, IDG News via, PCWorld
