I run Measure Map on clock to stay somewhat apprised of who’s reading what on this blog. I’m an alpha customer, so I paid attention last week when Google purchased the company from Adaptive Path. I don’t pretend to know Google’s strategy on analytics, but I am curious, personally, to know what the long-term cost will be. In alpha, I’m not paying anything, although it was always clear that there would be a paid level at some point. Will this service, like Google Analytics (nee Urchin), be free going forward?
A few broader thoughts on blog analytics coalesced when I read Mike Arrington’s note about BlogBeat, a competitor in the blog analytics space, though not free.
First, most interesting ideas which require no more than time and expertise will have several teams chasing the same market.
For example, Mint gets good reviews from those who use it, and it’s $30 for a license. The only limit (at this point) is the application model, where you must install Mint on your webserver to get the analytics. It’s not a high hurdle, but it’s higher than Measure Map or BlogBeat. I suppose Shaun Inman, the author of Mint might consider partnering with someone to offer such a hosted service. (Has he done so already? Didn’t see it.)
Google Analytics bothers some because of the idea that Google knows everything about your site, which ignores what they already know if you’re running AdSense. I’m sure there are other solutions, including free (at some level). The challenge is finding them, evaluating them, and seeing which ones will last, so your historical data has some meaing. Success breeds costs, so free always seems curious/surprising in the long run (if quite pleasant!). Note: My bias on ideas being trumped by execution is clear.
Second, analytics are a strong business opportunity for the web.
There is the ego factor, not to be discounted in the personal publishing realm. Why else would all bloggers, including myself, really care about Technorati and the other blog search engines? Show me who’s talking about what I wrote, and where traffic is coming from, and I’m fascinated… because it’s a mirror. Narcissism is another word for it, but I’m not actually that pessimistic. I think looking for evidence that you are part of a conversation, however small, is worthwhile, and a reminder that the internet is really great for two things: communication and multiple views on databases. Analytics help you measure your communication skills.
Beyond the personal gratification, for all those who make their business online (blog or otherwise), communication is marketing. Why wouldn’t you measure your investment (time or otherwise) in marketing, if you could?
Working at a company which delivers over 100 million pageviews/day (see the Q4 2005 earnings release, I have a sense of the investment required in analytics for serious scale. I’d love to understand more of the tools available to those running Amazon.com, Google, Yahoo, eBay, and About.com, to name the first five which come to mind as companies with enough scale and value in their data to make this problem both really challenging and really interesting. Below the scale of the web behemoths, though, there is a huge marketplace for companies like Omniture and others. Note: CNET News.com is using Omniture, as anyone who views source can see, so I’m most familiar with some of its offerings. I’m aware of some of the competition, too, but it’s not a focus on a daily basis.
(Side note: I also think FeedBurner‘s business has a strong basis in analytics for RSS, even if the advertising network is the long-term fuel for their growth.)
Third, I expect the blog analytics companies to disrupt the analytics marketplace as WordPress or Drupal are doing in the content management space. The low-end is open-source, and the very high-end is custom… leaving a lot in the middle. In the analytics space, analog is a battle-tested Unix program for analyzing web server log files that several have put better front-ends on.
There is a market even at the high-end for better tools to understand the flood of data which flows from web usage patterns, but how big is the market? This December 2005 CNET News.com article on Omniture and the analytics space has some information, but it’s still an open question.
My take is that many businesses are still adapting and adopting the web as a lead business channel. It’s still early, which means there are still plenty of companies (big and small) which need help in interpreting their online businesses. I’m guessing that the initial experience with Google or Yahoo’s keyword buying and analytical reporting tools will whet the appetite for more of the same.
So, the growth of the overall web analytics market will mask the disruption from the low-end for a few years, and we’ll see more analytics players rather than fewer in the next three years. Thereafter, the low-end will keep moving up the food chain, and I think the total marketplace (dollars spent) on analytics will plateau in about five years, even as our incessant thirst for meaningful data continues to rise.
As a potential note of interest, Measure Map tells me that clock averages 30 daily visitors, while FeedBurner tells me that clock‘s full-text feeds have a daily circulation of 199. So consider yourself a real blogaholic if you read this far, whether in a browser or a reader. And thanks.