Community Newspapers – Hear Them Roar

Two years ago Google acquired Urchin web analytics and made it free. They renamed it Google Analytics and it’s now the most popular hosted analytics. Google Analytics is hosted by Google and you access your account online.

Today at ad:tech in San Francisco, Google Analytics announced that Urchin software is out of beta. The software is a standalone version that you can host on your own server (and if you’re paranoid about Google having access to your data, this is a way to be sure your data is private). 

For now you can only get a US version, but international versions will be next.

The Google Analytics blog pointed out why you might want to use Urchin if you:

• want to analyze your firewall-protected content, such as an intranet
• have 5 years’ worth of old server log data to analyze
• need to know if your site’s visitors are getting “Page Not Found” (404) errors
• need to have your site’s traffic data audited by a third party
• need to create custom reports or integrate with other tools, like a CRM system
• need to integrate your e-commerce logs directly with Urchin

They point out you may want both Google Analytics and Urchin Software. Urchin is available exclusively through Urchin Software Authorized Consultants, a subset of Google Analytics Authorized Consultants professional services network.

They will implement Urchin on your site and they offer consulting and support services. Try a free demo of Urchin for 30 days at urchin.com. The full version of Urchin 6 is $2995.