Counterstrike on Web Analytics Vendors - Yahoo! Acquires IndexTools

Yesterday the whole web analytics world got awesome news as Yahoo! announced acquisition of IndexTools' Analytics business. This is probably better news than Google buying Urchin couple of years ago. And why? In my opinion, Google Analytics hasn't developed much since the acquisition. In the mean time IndexTools has shown very good development and especially new version number 10 and Rubix is comparable to more expensive solutions.

How does this change the market? I have to agree with predictions by my colleagues Steve Jackson, Eric Peterson, Lars Johansson and the rest: Yahoo! will give some web analytics parts for free! That would be killing news for web analytics vendors, Google Analytics included. As being a web analytics consultant and user of both systems, I have to say that IndexTools is much more flexible and user friendly than GA is. For example campaign tracking is very easy with IndexTools and the system has been already a very good option for SME companies. If a free version is released, it will definitely be one in the future too.

If Finnish translation is not absolutely needed, I'll recommend upcoming Yahoo! Index/Yahoo! Analytics or whatever it will be, to all of our clients. By doing this, we can concentrate on analytics work itself, and as Eric Peterson says, people and process.