It looks like another shot’s been fired in the Web analytics war.  Yahoo Web Analytics has been made available – for free – to search and display advertisers who work with account support teams and managers.

Yahoo has given the Yahoo Web Analytics interface a new look and some new features. These new demographics and interest group reports, as well as new segmentation, filters, a demographics and interest groups dashboard, the ability to create more scheduled reports, and custom fields with more actions.

New reports included in the new dashboard include:

CMS Watch, which evaluates and reports on content-related technologies, has issued a report saying that Yahoo Web Analytics (formerly IndexTools) is better than Google Analytics in a number of key areas.

It’s time for data hounds to start drooling.  Jerry Yang still isn’t ready to toss a Google Analytics competitor to every person who asks, but this afternoon, his company did announce that some people are being given access to the new Yahoo Web Analytics.