Every day, we spend countless hours visiting Web sites. What you may not realize is that the pages you see — updates to them, new pages on related topics, etc. — are determined by how often you use them. This follows the commonly known law of supply and demand: If someone wants it, someone else will be there to supply it. When you’re creating content, the question becomes, “What do visitors want?” Knowing what to supply is a matter for sophisticated programs to turn into simple graphs and pretty charts for us. That information makes up what we call Web stats.

Why Are Web Stats Important?

Countless Web sites, blogs and books are dedicated to Web stats, so instead of spending hours on a comprehensive review of the topic, the answer to the question of importance can best be summed up via the following sentence:

“If you spend time or money promoting your Web site, and if your business decisions are influenced by your Web site’s performance, you need to arm yourself with the most accurate and useful data available.”

There are a multitude of choices in the world of Web stats, also referred to as the “Web analytics industry.” You may have heard names like Omniture, Webtrends, Coremetrics, Urchin, Google Analytics, AWStats, Webalizer and IndexTools … Those are only the tip of the iceberg. They are some of the more popular stats packages in the market today, and each has its own distinct feature set and price point.

Note: Every single stats package on the market is a log file analyzer. SaaS/ASP/hosted stats programs like Omniture and Google Analytics create a log file of special tracking gifs, whereas standalone software programs like Urchin store the tracking gif directly in the Web server log file.

What Is Urchin?

In April of 2005, Google acquired San Diego-based Urchin Software Corp. At the time, Urchin had two main products:

1. Urchin Software – downloaded and installed on customers’ servers
2. Urchin On Demand – a SaaS version of Urchin

Google added some features to Urchin On Demand shortly after the acquisition, and the product was relaunched as Google Analytics a few months later. In the meantime, the Urchin Software project was shelved for approximately two years while development resources were obtained. Finally in April 2008, Google launched a new version – Urchin 6.

Urchin 6 is a software package. You download and install it on one of your servers, and the software generates reports by reading your Web server log files. Urchin can be scheduled to provide new reports whenever you choose – daily, hourly, weekly or at a custom interval – and you view reports with any Web browser.

Hardware & Software Requirements

Urchin 6 is designed to play nicely with other applications. Because Urchin is a database-driven application, you can improve performance by throwing hardware at it. Here are some rough guidelines for Urchin’s hardware and software needs:

• RAM: From 100 MB (with geolocation disabled) to 2 GB (geolocation enabled)
• CPU: The most common bottleneck, Urchin is not multi-processor aware and will only use one processor when processing data. This is one of the reasons why Urchin plays nicely with other applications. Starting with v6.601, both 64-bit and 32-bit processors are supported.
• Disk: Urchin needs 5 percent of the raw Web log file size for storage, and the app files are approximately 200 MB (800 MB if you’re using the geolocation feature)
• Operating System: Urchin runs on Windows, Linux and BSD
• Database: The application config settings are stored in mySQL or PostgreSQL, one of which must be present prior to installing Urchin.

Urchin can run directly on your Web server when it’s only tracking a few sites. If you have several Web sites or are running frequent reports on high-traffic sites, you may want to consider putting Urchin on another server. Obviously, you don’t want to impact your site’s performance in the name of getting Web stats for that site.

Urchin 6 Features

Urchin 6 has a TON of features, the most impressive of which are listed below:

• Data Privacy: Urchin runs on your server and doesn’t send report data back to Google. The only people who can see your stats are those who are explicitly granted access.
• Full Visitor Clickpaths: See the full clickpath for each visit to your site, as well as historical clickpaths for return visitors.
• Marketing Campaigns: Track search engine keywords, banner ads, emails, text links, press releases, offline campaigns, and more.
• AdWords & YSM Integration: Automatically download cost data from your Google AdWords and Yahoo! Search Marketing accounts.
• ROI Reports: Import cost data from anywhere and Urchin will calculate an ROI for that marketing initiative.
• Conversion Goals & Funnels: Ensure you’re attracting the right type of traffic to your Web site by examining aggregate behavior for specific activities like e-commerce transactions, lead form completions and file downloads.
• Historical Data Import: If you have five years of historical Web server log files, Urchin can read them and generate reports.
• Geolocation: View the country, state/province and city of each Web site visitor.
• IT Reports: See page errors, robot and spider crawl patterns, “non-standard” user agents and every file delivered by your Web site.
• Data API: The Urchin 6.6 release includes a powerful API that allows you to access the underlying profile datamap from the command line.
• Heavily Customizable: Advanced users can automate setup and customize reports, edit the user interface and process operations.

How to Buy and Where to Learn More

Urchin 6 is available in a 1000-profile package on all of The Planet’s dedicated hosting servers for only $10 per month. You can select the Web Analytics option in our shopping cart or contact a sales representative via ticket, live chat or phone to get it added to your account.

Some Urchin-related Web sites you might want to check out:

• http://www.urchin.com – Google’s site for Urchin
• http://www.urchintools.com – Urchin portal site, includes help articles and free tools
• http://www.urchinexperts.com – Another Urchin portal site with support information

A free 30-minute Urchin 6 webinar is run a few times a month by an authorized Urchin partner called ActualMetrics. Dates and times of upcoming Urchin 6 webinars can be found here:

http://www.actualmetrics.com/products/urchin-6-software/demo/

Take a little time to get to know your visitors. Urchin 6 can be a great way to start that process.

-Mark