Yahoo a Better Bet Than Google Analytics?

Thursday 19th, February, 2009

When it comes to Web analytics, Google has been shaking up the established fee-based players with its free offering – Google Analytics – and quickly grabbed the lead in market share, but researcher CMS Watch said big companies would be well-advised to check out a lesser known analytics player, Yahoo.

Last spring, Yahoo (NASDAQ: YHOO) bought Web analytics company IndexTools and converted the company's service to its own under the name Yahoo Web Analytics. CMS Watch said with the conversion complete, Yahoo is slowly ramping up promotion and further development of the service, but it already offers several advantages over Google Analytics.

Both services are free, though actively marketed by resellers who offer consulting services to help companies implement them.

"Google has more customers than anyone else," CMS Watch Founder Tony Byrne told InternetNews.com. "The difference at a feature level between Google and Yahoo isn't very much if you're a small to mid-level size Company, and those customers might prefer Google's slicker interface. But when you start talking about bigger sized companies with big Web site issues, Yahoo is more relevant."

Of course, Google (NASDAQ: GOOG) and Yahoo are hardly the only game in town. CMS Watch evaluated 20 Web analytics platforms, including Coremetrics, Omniture, Visible Measures, and WebTrends, against 12 potential use cases in a 470-page report released this week.

Byrne said smaller firms are attracted to the free services from Google and Yahoo, but they're not for everyone. Google said it had no comment on the CMS Watch report. Yahoo couldn't be reached by press time.

Who controls the Web traffic data

Byrne notes that the Terms of Service (TOS) agreements for both Google and Yahoo give those companies the right to reuse the data they collect as part of their ongoing aggregation of Web traffic data. Paid services typically don't, the data belongs to the client.

"Commercial Web analytics vendors, like WebTrends, Coremetrics, and Omniture, those guys will tell you, and I think it's true, that Google has helped them because it introduced a whole generation of Web managers to what analytics can do in a training tools kind of way," said Byrne. "They know there comes a time when these larger firms reach the limits of what Google can do and they'll need to upgrade."

On that later point of delivering what enterprises or large companies need, the CMS Watch analysis grades Yahoo higher in several areas. For one, it has a larger default monthly page-view limit, 200 million for Yahoo versus five million for Google. Google offers more if you're running an active Google AdWords campaign.

Another key difference is access to traffic data. Unlike Google, Yahoo gives you access to the raw data about Web site, not just the summary reports both offer, and the ability to export that data. Should you choose to migrate to another service, that export feature would let you continue to maintain a historical record instead of starting over.

"Enterprises with legal departments care about that availability to the raw data," said Byrne. He notes neither Google nor Yahoo shares the data outside of their own companies, but the rise in privacy and security-related issues have made IT departments more sensitive than ever to who has access to their company information.

Overall, CMS Watch found that Yahoo Web Analytics had its drawbacks, including "an administrative complexity that accompanied its functional richness." It also dinged the service for lack of 24/7 tech support. Byrne said neither Google or Yahoo is going to be a good fit for some enterprises that would be better off considering a fee-based Web analytics solutions. "What Google has done is focused on simplifying the report experience, but some enterprises may find the result too simple," said Byrne.

Source: InternetNews.com