Comments for Semantic Web: What Is The Killer App?

Free Analytics Suite Coming From Yahoo!

2008-04-16T16:07:09Z

Last week, Yahoo! purchased enterprise-level web analytics service provider IndexTools. Yesterday, Dennis Mortensen, COO of Index Tools, announced on his blog that Yahoo! would be setting the service free. The decision to offer a free analytics suite follows similar moves by Google and Microsoft. Google released Analytics (which we use here on ReadWriteWeb) in November 2005, drawing on software it acquired from Urchin and Adaptive Path, and Microsoft's adCenter Analytics is based on Deep Matrix, which it acquired in 2006.

]]> IndexTools, which currently cost between $49.95 and $249.00, is now free for any current customer willing to sign a new Yahoo! service agreement. So far 3,000 customers have done so, according to Mortensen. Right now, the free version is only for current IndexTools clients, but we can probably expect Yahoo! to release a free version to the general public at the time of the next IndexTools update.

This is an important development for the analytics industry, but also for Yahoo! If Yahoo! can successfully attract web publishers to their free service -- and it is hard to see why they wouldn't be able to -- it means the ability to gather loads of aggregate data for their behavioral ad targeting initiatives.

It will be interesting to see what effect this analytics arms race has on Google and Microsoft's offerings, and what might happen if the Microsoft-Yahoo! deal goes through.

Comment from prefabrik on 2008-04-16

2008-04-16T18:27:49Z

It will be interesting to see what effect this analytics arms race has on Google and Microsoft's offerings, and what might happen if the Microsoft-Yahoo! deal goes through.

Comment from Dan Grossman on 2008-04-16

2008-04-16T19:22:26Z

Just what I need, more paid competition turned free by subsidizing it with other businesses. How am I supposed to compete?

Comment from The Masked Millionaire on 2008-04-16

2008-04-16T19:35:37Z

Two words: It's about time.

Live From Las Vegas
The Masked Millionaire

Comment from SebKom on 2008-04-16

2008-04-16T19:52:24Z

Is it clear now that Yahoo wants to play a vital role on the web? I predicted the free analytics, I am now predicting a co-operation with Amazon, or something relevant, to battle Google Apps.

Yahoo!

Comment from Josh Catone on 2008-04-16

2008-04-16T19:54:21Z

@Dan: For what it's worth, I still find W3Counter's analytics more useful for my purposes on Rails Forum than Google Analytics -- though use both.

Comment from Dave on 2008-04-16

2008-04-16T20:44:14Z

Wow, only 3 years late to the party? It'll be tough to convince publishers to switch from Analytics. But I'll admit it is a necessary piece of the puzzle (of publisher tools) that Yahoo needs to compete against the Google juggernaut.

Comment from Josh Catone on 2008-04-16

2008-04-16T20:54:16Z

@Dave: Why switch? It's helpful to run more than one analytics package to get a complete picture of your web sites traffic.

Comment from Matt on 2008-04-16

2008-04-16T23:41:06Z

if you are looking for an open source alternative to Google analytics, the future yahoo offering, try Piwik. Piwik is an open web analytics software, built on APIs and with a plugins architecture, that you can customize for your needs!

http://piwik.org

Comment from Helen on 2008-04-17

2008-04-17T13:23:33Z

Google may have the network behind them, which is a benefit especially now that they are providing industry averages. However, if Yahoo offers a better tool that also is free, I can see a consumer change in preference on the horizon.

Also, the major effect of running more than one analytics package, which offer the same features, is an increase concern for the validity of the data.

Comment from prefabrik hazır ev on 2008-04-23

2008-04-23T15:56:44Z

Thanks for information, it was very helpful.

Comment from How To Make A Website on 2008-05-09

2008-05-10T00:30:52Z

I've been an IndexTools customer for about 4 years now and the services are fantastic. On pretty much every site that I own, I have Google Analytics and Indextools code in place.

With that said, I log into Indextools 7 days a week and log into Google Analytics about once every two weeks. That's I continued to pay them nearly $200 per month, because their analytics package was so much better than Google's.

If Yahoo can maintain the same services as offered by Indextools, it would be wise to give it a shot.

Just my 2 cents.

Comment from MONIS on 2008-05-14

2008-05-14T13:04:56Z

i like yahooi