• lWeb Analytics Demystified, Wednesday, April 9, 2008 1 PM

Eric T. Petersen argues that while there have been a number of major buys and mergers in the Web analytics industry, Yahoo's IndexTools grab has the potential to be the "permanent game changer."

The popularity of IndexTools' analytics suite stems from the quality of its functionality and support--at a fraction of the cost of some of the bigger solutions, Petersen says. Meanwhile, Google has already established an analytics consultant network--which, in theory, could serve as a ready-made distribution channel for a Yahoo-branded IndexTools solution. Petersen says that those two factors combined with the vast reach (and rich demographic data) of Yahoo's network are a recipe for an analytics industry transformation.

Yahoo can just rebrand IndexTools and continue to sell the suite, while thinking about long-term integration strategy, or the Web giant can develop a robust free offering at the low end, and keep some of the more advanced options for paid customers only. Yahoo could also give away the entire analytics suite for free (a la Google Analytics).

"If Yahoo! chooses the third option immediately, or as Google did, waits six months and then goes to a totally free model, suddenly there are far fewer reasons to pay for web analytics at all," Petersen says. For naysayers that argue it would be too expensive for Yahoo to do, "keep in mind that you said that about Google and Urchin," he says. "My money is on free IndexTools before Christmas 2008."

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