Google cuts price of Urchin Web analytics service

Google has slashed the price of the Web analytics hosted service it acquired when it bought Urchin Software, Google announced Tuesday.

Urchin On Demand, which tracks Web site usage, now costs $199 per month, down from $495 per month, a 60 percent reduction.

In addition to the price drop, Urchin On Demand has been enhanced by increasing the number of Web sites it can monitor per subscription and by integrating it with Google's AdWords advertising network.

Urchin On Demand now can track usage of up to 50 Web sites per subscription, whereas before it could only track one Web site per subscription. Independently of how many Web sites are getting monitored, a subscription covers a maximum of 100,000 page views per month. Subscribers have the option of adding one million more page views for an additional $99 per month.

Another enhancement is Urchin On Demand's ability to import a subscriber's account data from AdWords to help him determine the return on investment of his AdWords ad campaigns.

Urchin On Demand tracks how visitors arrive at a Web site and what they do there. The hosted service can identify whether users were referred to the Web site via a search engine, an external link or an ad placed by the Web site owner to attract traffic. The latter type of metric is useful for letting Web site owners know how effective their different ads are.

Based on the usage information it collects, Urchin On Demand can generate a variety of reports that Web site owners can use to improve their Web sites.

Google is offering a 15-day free trial of Urchin On Demand. More information is available at http://www.urchin.com.

The capabilities in the Urchin On Demand hosted service are also provided in an Urchin software product whose price hasn't changed since the company's acquisition, said Salar Kamangar, director of product management for AdWords. The Urchin software's base module costs $895, according to information on Urchin's Web site. That base module can be extended with optional modules, such as one for e-commerce reports that costs $695 and one to track ad campaigns that costs $3,995.