Google Urchin on Home Base?

2005 Nov 16 at 10:51 » Tagged as :

Just tried two of googles services, one made my head spin, the other made me wonder if google is loosing it's marbles.

Urchin Web Analytics, now called Google Analytics used to be a $199 per month service. Just recently they started to offer it free of charge to adwords users. Since Rad Inks spends quite a bit of money on adwords, I decided to give urchin ago.

It was only recently that we enabled conversion tracking, resisting the urge to add that javascript which created the google cookie. Afterwards tracking conversions for a while one of two conclusions can be reached. A)Spending money on adwords is a waste. Our cost per sale is far in excess of our revenue per sale. B) Conversion tracking is woefully inaccurate. When we cut down on ad spending our sales drop.

It was in this backdrop that analytics was tried out. Even though the analytics JS is plainly visible on the pages on our site, google insists it's not there. I must have clicked the check status button a dozen times. What's really funny is that the log file does not show any identifiable google robot attempting to fetch anything from the site when the check status button is clicked. Somewhat suprisingly, a couple of pages in the analytics help section throw up 404s.

The other google service that made my head spin was google base. It sounds like a cross between the open directory, Ebay, and a classified system. Not suprisingly google has applied for some patents on classified systems.