Yahoo! announced yesterday that it was acquiring IndexTools, (original post). Having been build from the ground up for flexibility and data analysis IndexTools is a robust analytics platform, i.e. it is superior (and a bit more complex) than Google Analytics. The platform itself offers less canned analysis, which then puts the hones on analysts to think more about their data, to help discover actionable insights. Since Yahoo, Google, & MSN are such fierce competitors in today’s web space I imagine that Yahoo! will offer this as a “Freemium” solution, where some functionality is offered to small and mid-sized businesses at no cost and incremental services will be available at a reasonable cost.
Competition Heats Up
How will this acquisition affect Google Analytics & Microsoft’s Ad Center? Yahoo!’s Michael Wexler, unofficially states that they’re approaching the market from a different angle. The goal, he as he describe it is to provide all users of Yahoo! products, (development, advertiser, shopping, and end user products) to analyze usage data in a comprehensive way to derive optimal use. He goes on to compliment Google Analytics’ success as a basic tool, but criticizes that it’s not designed for people that “really want to understand their data, nor is it aimed at the variety of ways people can work with Google (it ignores all that API stuff, for example).” Wexler views IndexTools as “the foundational start to understanding not just marketing and its impact on site behavior, but how to understand you online site usage to achieve your goals…”
The interesting play here is how this will undercut the other free offerings from Goolgle & MSN, but I expect it to have little impact if any to the enterprise solutions. On the other hand Eric Peterson has different take on the matter. As Eric puts it “this one is potentially the permanent game changer.” Time will tell.
