Blog Tipz

The Urchin Software from Google is now available for download from urchin.com. The software is not free, however there is a 90-day trial version of the beta available here. Otherwise, it’ll cost about $2,995 through the Urchin Software Authorized Consultants.

The new version replaces the older, but still supported production release of Urchin 5. If you are in need of a temporary trial (for evaluation purposes only) of the software and have the budget for purchasing it when the final release is available, it looks like a viable solution for people looking for advanced visitor tracking tools on your own server. 

Screenshot of new version 

Additional benefits in the new version include:

• Suitable for organizations that have content behind a security firewall or have other restrictions that prevent them from using the Google Analytics service.
• Also useful for those who want to perform ad-hoc historical log processing, and want to store their web analytics on local servers, or require third-party data audits.
• More accurate geo-identification of visitors.
• Cross-segmentation options similar to Google Analytics.
• E-commerce and campaign tracking included.
• Vastly improved embedded scheduler to more easily manage processing/re-processing jobs.
• Improved user interface and more robust log processing engine.

Once again, this product wasn’t designed for small sites/blogs, but larger corporations. The Urchin Software could probably be used for blog networks and larger blogs, however, with larger budgets as an all-in-one metrics tool.