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The big news today is that Google has made Urchin free and renamed it Google Analytics. This could be a serious blow to competitors such as WebTrends, although I doubt Google will initially offer a free package that competes on an enterprise level.

Google Analytics Gives Webmasters Something To Consider
In terms of basic pageview and visitor tracking I see Google dominating the market in short order ... significantly impacting the market share of services such as Site Meter.

However, more interesting to me is how Google could utilize this new data. For instance, Google could add pageview and unique visitor data to its search algorithm in order to more accurately determine site popularity and "Web Attention". This would be more reliable than PageRank because it can't be SEO'ed to artificially inflate a sites popularity. Linking information is nothing compared to the real data Google will have on websites utilizing Google Analytics. If sites utilize this service in en masse this could be a revolutionary change to their search algorithm.

Sounds like another concept for Google to patent!

I'm interested in your thoughts on this. Comment Here...

Rich Ord is the CEO of iEntry, Inc. which publishes over 200 websites and email newsletters. Rich also publishes his blog WebProBlog which focuses on internet business and marketing trends.