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November 14, 2005

Urchin Now Free, Fox Watches Henhouse

As I predicted back in March, Google has opened up their recently purchased Urchin web analytics software for free. Nice way for them to potentially capture some additional PPC market share, and likely put a serious dent in the revenues of most web analytics firms.

Of course, now Google really owns your data, and you might not feel entirely comfortable with the fox watching the henhouse, so to speak. Especially with the rumors of Google snatching high-paying AdWords clients, what really goes into smart pricing, and a host of other conspiracy theories, many nicely summed up over at SEOBook.

As Andrew Goodman has said:

There are plenty of ways to track your conversions. Install a tool that doesn't send your back-end data back to the same guys who are selling you the traffic.

Still, Urchin (or rather, Google Web Analytics) for free is going to be tough to pass up.

Update: Seeing a lot of reports that it does not yet work.

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