Google Analytics Swings at Measure Map

Google took the wrapper off Analytics today. It is a rebranding of their Urchin acquisition from earlier this year.

It works in much the same way as MeasureMap – using it requires the addition of javascript into a couple of files on your blog. It has deep integration into Adwords as well.

Google Analytics is mostly free (up to 5 million page views per month), or completely free if you are an adwords user.

Registration for Analytics is currently suspended but I’ll be doing a full side by side review against Measure Map in the next day or two. The screen shot provided by Google (to left) is encouraging.

One thing I’d like to understand is whether Google Analytics takes a holistic approach to blog analytics like Measure Map does, or whether it is a more generic application for measuring general website statistics. Measure Map is awesome at monitoring traffic at the post and comment level and has used flash and Ajax integration in a very intelligent way.

More on the Meme.

UPDATE: The site has been down all day and they have suspended registrations for now. The bigger problem appears to be that Google didn’t notify Urchin’s paid subscribers ($200/month) that the change was going to happen, and those subscribers have no access to their data right now. Ethan Stock tells the story and he is pissed off.

Google isn’t acting like a real business, they are acting like an over-enthusiastic Golden Retriever puppy. Oh, they just knocked the vase off the table with their tail, but aren’t they cute? Um, no. Google, grow up.