As MySpace has lost ground to Facebook and other competitors in the social networking world, it's increasingly focused on something it's always done well: music. Being a musician on MySpace just got a lot easier, thanks to new analytics features that give you a better picture of who's visiting your site and listening to your music. On top of that, MySpace has also worked out a deal with several prominent record labels to put a huge archive of music videos online.

On the new Artist Dashboard, artists can check out the demographics of their fanbase, including a breakdown of age, gender and location. The Dashboard also includes pageviews and song plays over time, and integrates information from iLike, which MySpace acquired earlier this year.

Music videos are now a much bigger part of MySpace. On top of the new video archive, music videos will show up in an artist's MySpace Player if they're available. Of course, MySpace has found a way to monetize the heck out the video business, including plenty of ads. Still, it's nice to have another large stash of music videos online, and it might include some that you can't easily find on YouTube.

[via TechCrunch]

Google has announced some major improvements to its Google Analytics traffic tracking package, mostly focusing on improving the way it tracks mobile devices. Adding a new snippet of code to the mobile version of your site will get you traffic analysis from mobile devices, and it works regardless of whether a visitor's mobile browser supports Javascript. Google has also added features for iPhone and Android developers to track how users are engaging with their apps. Aside from these mobile features, users will also be able to customize which variables Analytics will track.

The other big news is something called Analytics Intelligence. Analytics Intelligence watches the traffic patterns on your sites and alerts you if anything changes. It handles huge spikes or drops in traffic, but it can also drill down to look at changes by location and other factors. Alerts are customizable, so you'll only get email about changes you actually care about.

[via CNET]

Adobe announced it's buying Omniture, the web analytics firm it's been using to track usage stats on its products for years. Omniture is one of the largest analytics companies out there, serving a roster of customers including America Online (this blog's parent company), British Telecom, Disney, eBay, and Ford. Adobe's using thick corporate-speak in its press announcements about this acquisition so far, but the upshot is that they can target content to users with the help of Omniture's behavior-tracking capabilities. That means Adobe is now well-positioned to get into the advertising business.

While Adobe sees Omniture as a business opportunity, some privacy-conscious web users see it as a spyware peddler. You may remember Omniture as the company behind the slightly shady 2o7.net domain, which looked to many users like an IP address, but was actually a domain that Omniture used to track stats. Omniture eventually (sort of) explained 2o7.net, but hasn't stopped using it. They also still offer an option to opt out of the domain's tracking cookies. I haven't heard much of an uproar about 2o7.net in the past few months, but Omniture's privacy policies still say that "the 2o7.net domain is the primary domain our corporate customers use to measure visitor behavior on their website(s)."

I keep seeing a sensational story from Mashable flash across my radars today: "Bing Now Bigger Than Digg, Twitter and CNN." Golly, I guess millions in TV advertising really can make you win in this crazy marketplace, huh? Not so fast, bucko. Google isn't going anywhere, and digg, Twitter and CNN folks are likely not sweating this any more than I am. Why?

First of all, let's consider the source. Compete.com is the "unwashed masses" product from Compete, Inc. Competitors of these guys include heavyweights like comScore, Nielsen/NetRatinga and Alexa. Granted, Compete was bought by research firm Taylor Nelson Sofres back in 2008, but their 2007 revenues weren't terrific. I'm not saying Compete's data is wrong, but I am saying that there's a little potential for self-serving headline grabbing here. I wonder what Compete's stats for today have been, eh? Well, according to their own site, Compete does better traffic than Alexa, and it looks like they get more than double Alexa's traffic. So maybe they're not so small, and maybe this is great. But Compete is just another 3rd party player here, so we can't be 100% on these metrics to begin with. Oh, and the kicker: these are US visitors only.

Now on to the data. How could Bing grab so many new users in so little time? Hmmm. Well, none of us bloggers have been able to shut up about it, but to be honest, not that many people listen to us. But it might be two other factors (call this a hunch):

There are a lot of ways to measure how quickly your site loads, but most of them aren't going to be reflective of how your users perceive your load time. Webslug is a tool that attempts to give you a read on the load time from request to fully-loaded. You can put in one URL or compare two URLs in a head-to-head battle.

It's nice to see a web-based tool to measure this stuff, no downloads required. I'm not sure how useful Webslug's data is, compared to the data you might get from other testing methods. There are aggregated numbers for different browsers and OS's, but those leaderboards might not mean much on their own. If you test Webslug, let us know whether you find it useful in the comments.

Microsoft is ending its adCenter Analytics Beta. The company is no longer accepting new users, although existing users will be able to access the service through the end of 2009. You'll probably want to export your data by December 31st though, unless you're cool with watching it all disappear.

Microsoft adCenter Analytics Beta was a bit of an answer to Google Analytics and other web analytics software although, as the name suggests, it was designed with advertising analytics in mind.

If you were an adCenter Analytics user, or even if you weren't, Microsoft has provided a rather lengthy list of companies offering similar services, including Google Analytics, Omniture, and Yahoo! Web Analytics.

[via paidContent]

Web analytics is an increasingly important metric for web publishers. It used to just be about tracking how many visitors you get and how many pages they view. Technology has improved so that you can now track site entry points, popular keywords, specific post metrics, out-bound clicks, nationality of your visitors and more. The problem is, to actually get that data into something useful, you usually have to dedicate a bunch of time analyzing statistics or you have to pay for an expensive commericial analytics package. Today, NuConomy is officially launching its free web analytics platform, NuConomy Studio, designed to meet both of those challenges.

The platform that NuConomy will most likely be compared to is Google Analytics, because both are free and both offer easy integration into various web platforms. In its scope, however, NuConomy Studio is much more akin to Omniture, but without the hefty licensing fee that pretty much excludes all but the biggest sites from taking advantage of its enhanced metrics.

For instance, most analytics programs can't monitor interaction with JavaScript (AJAX) or Flash elements. So you can't get a metric on how frequently that YouTube video is played (or which video is most popular). NuConomy can track AJAX, Flash and Silverlight and then show you what elements (or videos) were most popular. With YouTube videos, you can even find out how visitors are watching the videos before stopping or going to another page. So if you're a VBlogger, you can better pinpoint what is working and what isn't.

Google has taken the beta label off yet another project that is significantly younger than Gmail, which remains in beta. Google Website Optimizer has been available to AdWords customers for the past year, but now the company is making it available to anyone who wants to test out different web site layouts.

Basically, the tool lets web publishers try out different designs on their web page to see which one performs best. Want to see which ad unit is more likely to get people to click? Want to see which RSS icon is more likely to get people to subscribe to your site's feed? Google Website Optimizer will let you set up an experiment and track the results.

There's also a new Google Website Optimizer blog that you can follow for news and tips related to the tool.

[via Google Blogoscoped]

A few days ago Yahoo! announce it was purchasing IndexTools, a powerful web analytics suite that rivals similar applications from Google and Microsoft. Now IndexTools COO reports that the plan is to offer IndexTools free of charge. That's the good news.

The bad news is that for now, the free service will only be available to existing clients and partners who accept the new terms of service. Yahoo! won't be accepting new users until it rolls out the next version of the application and it's still too early to know when that will take place.

Eventually the free service could offer some serious competition for Google Analytics, one of the most popular free tools for web publishers who want to track reader statistics and optimize their advertising.

[via Techmeme]

Yahoo! could be preparing to launch a Google Analytics competitor. The big Y has acquired Tensa Kft, makers of IndexTools.

Yahoo! will integrate IndexTools with its current analytic tools to help build the company's advertising network. The services will first be available to members of the Yahoo! ad network, but eventually the company plans to build a system that will let third party developers "monitor and optimize the traffic performance" of web applications.

The deal is expected to close in the first half of the year. The terms of the acquisition were not released.

[via TechCrunch]

There's no shortage of packages for tracking statistics on visitors to your blog or web site. But we have to say, Woopra looks like it could blow the competition out of the water. That's because it offers real-time stats tracking, showing you a list of who's on your site right now, where they came from, and what they're looking at. And if they've left comments or otherwise identified themselves to Woopra, you can check out their user profiles and even send them an invitation to chat in real-time while they're visiting your site.

The service is currently in beta, but the plan is to make it available free of cost to Linux, Mac, and Windows users. You can sign up for a free account today, but you might have to wait a little while for Woopra to approve your web site. The developers are still working on scaling the system to support a large number of accounts.

[via GeekBrief.TV and TechCrunch]

Google, reigning king of exhaustive analytics, has just released a specialized analytics tool for YouTube, aptly named YouTube Insight.

YouTube Insight is a free tool that enables anyone with a YouTube account to view detailed statistics about their uploaded videos. In other words, if you've ever wondered who is watching your latest solo diatribe about the benefits of Proactiv Solution (we were wondering that too...), that information is now one click away.

YouTube Insight tracks information such as the geographic region of your viewers, how popular your video is relative to other videos in a similar market, and more.

The currently available data can be found by clicking under the "About this Video" button under My account > Videos, Favorites, Playlists > Manage my Videos. Look for much more data to be added in the future.

Of course, this isn't just for the Mentos and Diet Coke uploaders. Eventually, as YouTube becomes more monetized, these same metrics will provide valuable data to partners and advertisers, so that they can adjust their marketing to reach the viewers they most desire.

Google has quietly announced some new features for Analytics, its web tracking tool. They seem small, but these additional tracking features will provide much greater insight into what is going on your website since you can't always peer over visitors' shoulders to watch.

The updates include:

• Site Search Tracking - Users will now be able to tell exactly what keywords visitors searched for on your site, and where these searches end up.
• Event Tracking - Currently in a limited beta test, these website reports will show how users interact with various multimedia aspects on your site, including flash and Ajax without messing with pageview metrics.
• Outbound link Tracking - Also in a limited beta test rolling out in the next few weeks, reports will show what links website visitors click on that direct them to an outside site.

If you have a website, and don't already have the free Google Analytics code installed, you are missing out on understanding how your visitors move around, how they interact with your content and how they got there in the first place. Google Analytics not only provides insight on how people navigate, but it also aids in targeting site content towards what people enjoy. It's easy to set up, free and Analytics reports are super simple to understand.

Google might currently have the hottest ad network around, but that hasn't stopped the competition from nibbling at the search giants heels.

Yahoo has announced that they will be acquiring the fifth largest online advertising network for $300 million. BlueLithium specializes in tracking consumer behavior as they move from site to site in order to serve more relevant ads, something Google is strongly opposed to. BlueLithium is only a three year old company, and has an impressive client list comprising of AT&T, T Mobile, Dell, Chase, Verizon, WalMart, AOL and Best Buy.

This deal is said to allow Yahoo! the ability extend their powerful analytical reports, provide advanced targeting and create innovative media buying strategies.

[via NYTimes]

If you're creating websites, you'll probably know about Google Analytics, the once-expensive now-free web statistics service from the big G. Whilst you could, of course, log in to Google Analytics via the Analytics (recently-upgraded) website, it might seem like overkill to go to the hassle of logging in just to check visitor numbers.
Thankfully, Mac users can rejoice because Dashalytics allows you check visitor numbers, referrer sources and a fair amount more all from your Dashboard. Version 3 of Dashalytics came out just last week (with 3.0.1 being released today), so if you're wanting a hassle-free way to see just who's sending you all that traffic, this might be the very ticket.