Users who want to be part of Google’s online website analytics service should start checking their inboxes for an email invite from Google to join the program.
I went down the street to the 24-hour grocery. When I got there, the guy was locking the front door. I said, “Hey, the sign says you’re open 24 hours.” He said, “Yes, but not in a row.”
— Steven Wright
When the search advertising company rebranded its Urchin service as Google Analytics and threw open the doors to the Internet, the crush of eager applicants overwhelmed the system, and Google had to close the service to new sites.
If you listened closely you could hear ClickTracks and WebTrends softly chuckling in the distance. However, Google may be ready to wipe some smiles away as Analytics slowly reopens to new sites.
Google discussed their progress in a post from the Analytics team:
We’ve added enough capacity that we are re-opening signups on an invitation basis. Many of our users who previously submitted their email address to us will be receiving an invite shortly.
As you may know, we experienced extraordinarily strong demand shortly after we launched last November. To ensure a high quality user experience for existing customers, we had to temporarily disable new signups. We have been working diligently to add more capacity that we can both enhance performance for existing users and re-open signups to a limited number of new users.
Since we launched, we’ve improved the freshness of report data so that our existing customers can see reports that are as recent as 3 hours ago. We’ve also re-enabled the addition of new profiles so that all of our existing customers can track additional sites using Google Analytics.
Google apparently underestimated the power of the brand they’ve carefully built over seven years. The G stamp of approval was enough to draw plenty of interest. Demand certainly exists for an effective, comprehensive analytics service that comes with a price tag of free; Google is making an effort to meet that demand.
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David Utter is a staff writer for Murdok covering technology and business.
