Google has purchased the web site stat company Urchin. Urchin is a competitor to companies such as Webtrends which help webmasters track visitors.
Urchin, based in San Diego, California, will apparently enable Google to offer stat services to websites. If Google follows its normal pattern it is likely there will be a large free component to the use of the software. Google may be primarily interested in Urchin’s hosted version of this software in order to make it easier for its Blogger customers to utilize.
Financial terms were not disclosed.
Urchin bills itself as the world’s largest web analytics firm. The company states that they are used by over one million sites worldwide. Again, according to the firm, Urchin is the standard at most of the world’s largest hosts and 20% of the Fortune 500. Urchin was founded in 1995 and is privately held.
According to Google, they plan to make Urchin tools available to web site owners and marketers to better enable them to increase their advertising return on investment and make their web sites more effective.
“We want to provide web site owners and marketers with the information they need to optimize their users’ experience and generate a higher return-on-investment from their advertising spending,” said Jonathan Rosenberg, vice president of product management, Google. “This technology will be a valuable addition to Google’s suite of advertising and publishing products.”
The acquisition is subject to customary closing conditions. Google anticipates that the acquisition will close before the end of April.
murdok is the CEO of murdok which publishes over 200 websites and email newsletters.
Rich also publishes his blog WebProBlog which focuses on internet business and marketing trends.
