It is a very nice tool - I have had a good dig around and feel that if you can stand having all of your statistical data handed to Google on a platter* then I definitely think it is worth a look - if only to see the way the data is interpreted.
* I am not bothered - I have used urchin and really liked it - now it is a free service... I guess it is now offered like this becasue of the value it will add to Google - the amount of data it could garnish is incomprehensabley huge... if it takes off
Some of the key tools:
Stats- shows graphic/numeric representations of :
- Visits/Pageviews
- New/old visitors
- Visits by Source (google, yahoo, msn, direct, other...)
- Geo Map Overlay (nice graphic but not helpful)
Webmaster Overview:
- Content Summary
- Defined Funnel Navigation
- Entrance Bounce Rates
- Goal Tracking
- Content by Titles
Web Design Parameters:
- Browser Versions
- Platform Versions
- Browser & Platform Combos
- Screen Resolutions
- Screen Colors
- Languages
- Java Enabled
- Flash Version
- Connection Speed
- Hostnames
Unique Visitor Tracking
- Daily Visitors
- Visits & Pageview Tracking
- Goal Conversion Tracking
- Absolute Unique Visitors
- Visitor Loyalty
- Visitor Recency
Visitor Segment Performance
- New vs Returning
- Referring Source
- Geo Location
- Geo Map Overlay
- Network Location
- Language
- User-defined
- Domains
Marketing Campaign Results
- Campaign Conversion
- Source Conversion
- Medium Conversion
- Referral Conversion
- Campaign ROI
- Source ROI
- Medium ROI
Search Engine Marketing
- CPC Program Analysis
- Overall Keyword Conversion
- CPC vs Organic Conversion
- Keyword Considerations
- Day Parts Breakdown
It's Huge - no time to see what all this does but did have a little poke about. Goals seem quite useful:
Quote:
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A funnel is a series of pages leading up to the Goal URL. For example, you might define the checkout steps that lead up to a completed purchase as a funnel. In this example, the funnel generally would not include individual product pages -- rather, it would consist only of those final pages that are common to all transactions.
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There is also some nice export/print settings and caldendar gizmo to spot peaks for any given day.
It basically covers all you would get with Urchin and more than you would find with a programme like AWstats or Webaliser.
Not sure how to ge the whole site registered for monitoring yet though - only seems to be working on the index.html... I hoped i'd not have to inastall the script on every page...
First really defensive thought - Could G use this ability to rank pages depending on hits - I don't think it was ever part of the algo?