Google's Urchin 6 Software Beta Now Public

90 day trial, then goes commercial

[Marcia]

Today we're happy to announce that the Urchin Software from Google beta is now available for download at urchin.com. Urchin Software from Google is a web analytics product similar in scope to Google Analytics, except you install and manage the software on your own servers.

It's a 90 day Beta download, and when it comes out of Beta it'll be a commercial product priced at $2,995.

Announced today on the Google Analytics Blog [analytics.blogspot.com]

[Josefu]

$2,995.

*Coughcoughcough*. Who's the target audience for that price?

[hannamyluv]

Who's the target audience for that price?

Larger business and corporations who are nervous about using Analytics because they don't want to share their data.

I have run into many of them. Analytics is a very easy to use and robust system, when compared to many others on the market. If they take out the whole "Google is watching" factor, I bet alot of companies would use it and would be happy to pay the one time fee. Remember, many other analytics services are paid for on a subscription basis.

[mikedee]

Larger business and corporations who are nervous about using Analytics because they don't want to share their data.

I agree, the only reason I haven't gone with GA is the fact that all the data r belong to Google. $2,995 is not so much, especially given the state of the USD these days.

I wouldn't say that price was aimed at corporations, $250,000 is more of a corporate price tag. This is aimed at small business too.

[lammert]

It is not only the Google watching factor, but also the call to a third party server that is now needed to use Analytics.

I recently ran in performance problems with one of my sites where an apperently overloaded Analytics server caused the completion of loading of the pages to wait for several seconds. The only remedy I had was to disable the Analytics JavaScript call. If you host your own Analytics you can tune the server performance to your own needs and downtime or reachability problems of Google's server won't affect your site.

For my visitors volume $2995 is a bit too high though to be cost effective.

[ken_b]

That's not a bad price. Before Google made Analytics free the price for a site like mine was in the range of $700.00 a month.

It might well be worth a one time cost of 3 grand just to get away from G "knowing all" :)

[JAB Creations]

For three grand what do you get that you can't with other statistical analysis scripts?

- John

[Marcia]

I certainly wouldn't be tickled pink about it only being sold through their authorized consultants, seeing that SEO and SEM services are also available. Personally, I see that as a significant negative.

[mikedee]

For three grand what do you get that you can't with other statistical analysis scripts?

Lots and lots - urchin makes awstats look very very basic and useless. There are lots of things there for business like conversion statistics and you can set up campaigns and funnels. It will take about 90 days to test it properly.

[mikedee]

I am just looking through the code and it looks like it DOES still contact Google HQ and logs your visitors there.

Inside urchin.js is this

var _ugifpath2="http://www.google-analytics.com/__utm.gif";

followed by

 if ((_userv==1 ¦¦ _userv==2) && _uSP()) {
 var i2=new Image(1,1);
 i2.src=_ugifpath2+"?"+"utmwv="+_uwv+s+"&utmac="+_uacct+"&utmcc="+_uGCS();
 i2.onload=function() { _uVoid(); }
 }

hmmmmm....

[blend27]

--- [google-analytics.com...] ---

Response Headers - [google-analytics.com...]
-------------------------------------------------------
Pragma: no-cache
Cache-Control: private, no-cache, no-cache="Set-Cookie", proxy-revalidate
Expires: Fri, 04 Aug 1978 12:00:00 GMT
Content-Type: image/gif
Last-Modified: Tue, 04 Dec 2007 17:56:52 GMT
Server: ucfe
Content-Length: 35
Date: Sun, 03 Feb 2008 17:13:07 GMT

200 OK
------------------------------------------------------

I did a view source on the page and it gives me this: GIF89a
�
�€ÿ�ÿÿÿ��

So what are the tracking there on their side?

[edited by: encyclo at 6:25 pm (utc) on Feb. 3, 2008]
[edit reason] fixed side-scroll [/edit]

[mikedee]

The image will just be a transparent gif or something... The data is appended to the get request... ie.

"?"+"utmwv="+_uwv+s+"&utmac="+_uacct+"&utmcc="+_uGCS()

Whatever that is... looks like all the data that is sent to the hosting server. I have written to them to ask for an explanation but I am not holding my breath.

[mikedee]

A bit more investigating shows that it is related to the _userv variable at the top, which is set to 0 by default.

With a value of 0 it will not contact google-analytics...

Just to be sure though I might comment those bits of code or change the url before testing it.

[carguy84]

So what about current owners, no word of an upgrade price?

[joelgreen]

blend27, GIF can be generated dynamically (some thumbnail generators work that way). Extension and headers do not really matter. The way gif is accessed they would be able to determine visitor's IP, user agent string (browser, OS), and some other basic parameters. But some details would still be hidden (like flash/java version, screen resolution, color depth, etc.), unless they are added to the URL using javascript.

[cgrantski]

The last time I looked at the paid version of Urchin, a few weeks ago, I found a comparison chart on the Urchin site that showed features in GA vs Urchin. Urchin lacked a number of things that GA has (I don't remember what now) and it seemed at the time that it was an inferior product. I hope in this beta they have added in all of the improvements that GA brought to the original Urchin.

[foxfox]

Is $2#*$! USD a per server solution?

In Urchin5, if you want to track more than 1 server, you need to buy additional module. (6xx USD)