Full integration is expected to be complete some time during Q4 2006. Current Blogbeat customers can expect a continuation of their service until the acquisition is complete and will receive full refunds from FeedBurner, which is a free service.

The company plans to offer an optional fee-based service in 2007. Blogbeat will not add new users until the integration is complete.

“Blogbeat’s approach to leveraging feeds as a means to gather information about the blog is directly aligned with ours,” said Steve Olechowski, FeedBurner’s cofounder and Chief Operating Officer.

The FAQ offered at Blogbeat’s website accounts only for founder Jeff Turner to remain in employment with the company as FeedBurner swallows it up. Turner will join FeedBurner as Lead Engineer, Web Analytics. It is assumed that the rest of the staff will not transition with him.

|

Drag this to your Bookmarks.

Add to DiggThis Yahoo My Web

I believe there’s a huge opportunity in the blog metrics and analytics space. Many blogs use free programs with limited functionality and some have been able to get into Google Analytics. However, the measurable outcomes for a content publisher, particularly a blog, are different than for an ecommerce site. Therefore Google Analytics and many other stats programs are not the best fit for blog metrics.

What options for blog focused analytics are out there?

blogbeat is a fairly new hosted blog stats program that caters specifically to the needs of blog content publishers. It plays well with FeedBurner and offers tabs of information separated by: Posts, Visitors, Referrers, Searches and Links. There’s a free trial period and then a small monthly fee.

Google recently purchased Measure Map which also pays more attention to blog-centric information rather than conversions, but they are not adding any new accounts at the moment and I have not been able to try it myself. However, Solution Watch offers a rundown and screen shots of Measure Map.

Performancing Metrics really stands out as a blog metrics application for blogging pros. To get an idea of the features offered, see the post by Ahmed Bilal who reviews Performancing Metrics. Darren Rowse also breaks down details of Performancing Metrics along with screen shots on his ProBlogger site.

Performancing Metrics offers ad tracking, real-time blog stats, the ability to track mutiple blogs with one user account, RSS 2.0 feeds of your stats (how cool is that) as well as many other features. I am very intrigued by the blog analytics space, so I dropped a line to Nick with a few questions:

It seems the grand Performancing plan is to develop free tools that will help your growing network of professional bloggers be more effective and then roll out an ad network as well as other revenue generating services. Is that on target, and if not, can you clarify?

That’s perfectly on target. It’s always been our intention to build a different kind of blog ad network, one influenced by the pro blogging community. We felt that building that community via authorative posts on the site by us and our member, the introduction of productivity tools such as Performancing Firefox, and now the introduction of an industrial strenght analytics solution would be great way to start.

There are a few other new blog analytics services that have gained visibility recently including blogbeat and Measure Map. Do you intend on competing with those services or is Performancing Metrics really more for the pro bloggers in your network?

Whereas we thing both Blogbeat and Google MeasureMap are great tools, we don’t feel they compete with us, and we have no intention of competing with them. Performancing Metrics is aimed at the higher trafficked, more commercially oriented blogs out there, and although will work for any blog, is definately NOT geared for everyone.

The ads and outbound link tracking is pretty unique for “built-in” functionality of a blog stats program. What other unique features should bloggers know about with Performancing Metrics? What do you plan on adding after the initial beta?

One of the things we’re really excited about is the ability to add limitless blogs under one account. Currently we have it throttled at 500, as there has to be a limit, but should we encounter a network that exceeds that, we’ll raise it again.

There are a lot of features inherent in Performancing Metrics that make it a cut above average, but we’d be here all day if i started to list everything i thought was special about this service heh..

Is there any insight you care to provide regarding your revenue generating products being developed?

No. Other than we develop with community in mind, and all of our tools and services, and future products reflect that philosophy.

Thanks Nick!

I am just starting to play around with Performancing Metrics myself, and will post feedback after I’ve had a few days to gather some data. In the meantime, sign up for a Performancing account and when the metrics service becomes available, you’ll be able to try it yourself.

Update: Performancing Metrics is now available!

Lee Odden is President and Founder of
TopRank Online Marketing, specializing in organic SEO, blog
marketing and online public relations. He’s been cited as a search
marketing expert by publications including U.S. News & World Report and
The Economist and has implemented successful search marketing programs
with top BtoB companies of all sizes. Odden shares his marketing
expertise at Online Marketing Blog offering
daily news, interviews and best practices.

I signed up for a beta at Measure Map a while ago but nada. So instead, I hooked up with Blogbeat. Which is pretty flippin slick if you ask me. I’d love to review Measure Map and now that Google has acquired them, I’m sure Measure Map will be made freely available to the huge number of blogs out there.

Here’s an idea: Measure Map is Google’s way of relieving pressure off of Google Analytics. Imagine the massive server load from all those bloggers signing up for Google Analytics. It wasn’t too long and then GA shut down. Suprising when you think of the resources Google has.

When I spoke briefly with former Urchin VP, Brett Crosby, now of Google at the SES San Jose last summer he marveled at the scalability of Google and was very optimistic about Urchin’s place in the Googleplex. Now if he would just give me a damn interview.

Join the user data party!

TechCrunch has a good rundown on Measure Map.

Lee Odden is President and Founder of
TopRank Online Marketing, specializing in organic SEO, blog
marketing and online public relations. He’s been cited as a search
marketing expert by publications including U.S. News & World Report and
The Economist and has implemented successful search marketing programs
with top BtoB companies of all sizes. Odden shares his marketing
expertise at Online Marketing Blog offering
daily news, interviews and best practices.

Feed Digest grew out of the RSS Digest project from Developer/Entreprenuer, Peter Cooper. RSS Digest makes it easy to syndicate RSS feeds from other blogs to your site or blog using JavaScript.

Feed Digest on the other hand, offers many more features including the ability to mix multiple feeds (up to 5 for free). Another plus over it’s predessor are the output options which include HTML, JavaScript, WAP or PHP, or an altogether new feed. Upcoming features include RSS to Email (ala FeedBlitz) and feed stats (think Feedburner).

Here’s an example of a SEO News feed using 5 SEO Blogs I read daily.

blogbeat is a blog site statistics tool that presents information about visitors to your blog in a creative way. It does support Feedburner stats, you just have to go into Feedburner and activate the awareness option.

What’s different about blogbeat from services like Google Analytics is that it presents information about visitors and referral sources front and center. Google Analytics is more about conversions and more useful for ecommerce web sites where a specific outcome or trackable action is possible. That is not usually the format for a blog, until ecommerce blogs gain popularity at least, so services like blogbeat give you a quick glimpse at who’s reading your blog, what they’re looking at and where they came from.

I would be remiss not to mention Thomas’ RSS Feed Button Creator tool, which will allow you to create 20 plus RSS feed subscription buttons embedded with your blog’s feed and information. It also creates a number of social bookmark links so visitors to your blog can bookmark you to del.icio.us, digg, furl and others. Pretty handy and popular too.

Know of any blog marketing or RSS tools I should review here?

Lee Odden is President and Founder of
TopRank Online Marketing, specializing in organic SEO, blog
marketing and online public relations. He’s been cited as a search
marketing expert by publications including U.S. News & World Report and
The Economist and has implemented successful search marketing programs
with top BtoB companies of all sizes. Odden shares his marketing
expertise at Online Marketing Blog offering
daily news, interviews and best practices.

I actually heard of Blogbeat prior to MeasureMap – I think via Steve Rubel, although I can’t remember – but they were closed to the public until recently.

While I’m generally quite a big fan of MeasureMap, it is still in private alpha and rather slow. I’ve also been sort of confused by the stats I’ve seen with it. One example is that the number of total visitors reported often is lower than the total number of clickthroughs that FeedBurner shows me. That simply doesn’t make any sense.

Off the bat, I liked how easy it was to “install” Blogbeat. It required one javascript addition anywhere in the footer of my blog. MeasureMap requires three carefully placed scripts in various WordPress template files. To be fair, those additional scripts do allow for some different types of traffic tracking.

I’ll provide further analysis after I’ve gotten a better feel for Blogbeat. I’m also toying with applying my Google Analytics account to my blog at some point but it’s currently only running on my main site.

Feel free to share any of your experiences with these or other services.

Ken Yarmosh is a consultant who helps organizations get the most out of their technology investments. He works with technology users and creators across various industries, focusing on technology education and strategy. With over 7 years IT experience, Ken has worked with small businesses, non-profits, federal agencies, and multi-million dollar companies.

His online efforts include acting as the Editor for the Corante Technology Hub and authoring the TECHNOSIGHT blog.