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Microsoft To Declare War On Google Analytics

Microsoft To Declare War On Google Analytics

It looks as if everyone’s favorite company (unless you are into open source, Linux and that whole “freeware” thing) has decided to take on Google in the realm of web analytics.

Code named Gatineau (which ironically is the name of a city in Canada), Microsoft hopes to be able to compete against the new version of Google Analytics.

But while Microsoft admits that its software is very similar to Google’s, they boast that their new analytics tool will be able to break down visitor stats by age as well as gender.

(Internet News) “Of course it’s quite similar to Google’s Analytics product (which has been recently revamped, to mixed reviews), but apparently Gatineau will be able to leverage Live ID information … to offer demographic information,” wrote MVP (Microsoft Most Valuable Professional) Kip Kniskern on Windows Live enthusiast site LiveSide earlier this week.

Those added capabilities will include the ability to segment Web site visitors by both age and gender.

“Questions are already being asked … about where we get this data from; the answer is that we do get this information from users’ Live ID (formerly known as Microsoft Passport) profiles, but I would stress that we get this information anonymously, and there is no use of PII (Personally Identifiable Information, such as name or e-mail address) in the product,” said a blog post by Ian Thomas of Microsoft’s Digital Advertising Solutions group.

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Although marketing firms will find this to be “uber cool,” privacy experts may not welcome this feature at all. Web analytic tools already collect an enormous amount of data on visitors, and by Microsoft “sharing” its user data with its stat application may cause some people to either leave Live ID or falsify information (i.e. I live in Antarctica and I’m a 100 years old).

It will be interesting to see whether or not the blogosphere welcomes this tool upon their own weblogs, although for Live ID users Microsoft may have to find a way to make this tool “less evil.”

View Comments (5)
  • I think I’ll give it a try once it’s released. I’m using Analytics and PMetrics right now and they are both good, but I’m not totally in love with either of them.

  • and if they can tell me what my visitors had for lunch today….
    This is really going too far. I need info about my visitors’ browsers, screen resolutions, maybe even country they are in (that depends on what my monetizing schemes are). But, I was terrified when I saw for the first time that map on the google’s analytics that showed me cities where my wisitors are accesing my blog from. Isn’0t it too much? Can we have that on google maps with satelite shoots of somebody sitting in front of computer reading our blogs.
    Now, MS wants to go a step further in being Big Brother! And yes, we all know who the customers of that thing will be. The same marketing agencies that are responsible for the trash they call advertisements. Those that shows no idea, no originality and no creativity. Brainwashing trash (yes, I repeat the world) that is made of the results of focus groups and surveys. Repeating keywords and themes that ordinary John/Jane Doe will find interesting while sitting in front of TV. Or better, which will better get into their unconsciousness to trigger their action in the supermarket.

    As of MS vs. Google war… luckily Micro$oft is losing it. For the good reason, Google actually gave something to this world. But then, we will not be happy with the winner too.

  • As Microsoft doesn’t have access to adwords stats its gonna be difficult (sorry impossible) to replicate the functionality in Google Analytics. Microsoft can come up the wizbangiest analytics pachage in the world but I won’t use it because it won’t ever tie up to my adwords spending.

  • Microsoft could destroy google analytics by doing the following:

    Accurate stats on organic traffic. Google only knows about google traffic and can’t tell the difference for yahoo or msn.

    Not sharing or using our data for their purposes, this likely won’t happen.

    Accurate click data (where people click on my site, google tries this and fails).

    Analytics design that doesn’t suck, IE: it takes me 10 clicks to see where my google organic referrers are from.

    Concentration on quick loading stats as opposed to flashy graphs that I could care less about.

    Goals that work, google’s system is bugged and only allows 4..

    As you can see google’s system has tons of bugs which could be plugged incredibly easy. If they could fix these problems I’d promptly switch over.

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