Running Urchin VS Google Analytics

Running Urchin VS Google Analytics (0)

| 15/07/2008

We were asked by a client recently We were asked by a client recently to evaluate Urchin vs Google Analytics and provide analysis of each application. Both are web statistics programs owned and presented by Google, and discerning which is the right fit for your company can take some digging.

The main difference between the two products is this: Urchin must be installed on your own system with requirements for server side configuring and log processing. Google Analytics, on the other hand, is hosted by Google and requires very little in the way of technical maintenance.

Urchin Software does have a suite of benefits. There's no need to tag pages with code in order to track them, all the information is stored locally on your company's infrastructure, and the reporting can be sliced and diced in almost any way that you'd like.

Google Analytics, however, does have the more advanced features. Because Google is doing the hosting, new features roll out automatically to the interface. Especially valuable is how tightly Google integrates the Analytics with AdWords. From a reporting perspective, it has unique visitor drilldown with many possible variable views like session/path, platform, geo-location, browser/platform. Oh, and it's free and sets up in minutes.

If your content is behind a security firewall or on an internal network, then Urchin is the right choice. Otherwise, we recommend Google Analytics.

tags: Web 2.0 ,  Online Trends