Web Analytics market analytics
How does it work?
WASP was downloaded about 30,000 times and the latest version includes it's own analytics tags. This means that I can collect anonymous and aggregate information about the tools implemented on the sites visited while WASP is active. So as you browse, you not only get info about the tags on a page, but you also contribute to a global view of the web analytics market. A bit what like Alexa does for site rating, but especially made for web analytics. Cool isn't it? (And yes, this is stated in the EULA and no personal information is collected).Here are some base metrics:
- 30,000 downloads since the first version of WASP released in Feb. 2007,
- 8,000 installs of the latests in a month,
- 200,000 pages analyzed in a month,
- 10,000 sites analyzed in a month
Web Analytics market shares
Out of 10,016 sites visited by about 8,000 users over the last month:- Google Analytics was found on 64% of them
- Omniture SiteCatalyst on 16%
- WebSideStory/VisualSciences HBX on 8%
- WebTrends on 7%
- Coremetrics on 2%
- Google Analytics was found on 34% of the page viewed
- Omniture SiteCatalyst on 20%
- WebSideStory/VisualSciences HBX on 15%
- WebTrends, 9%
- Coremetrics, 2%
Analysis of web analytics vendors market share
Despite Google Analytics taking the lion share of the market in terms of installation (64% of visited sites), Omniture SiteCatalyst move to purchase VisualSciences is very wise. Not only it will give it nearly 25% of the market, it will also put Omniture at par with Google in terms of reach (as shown by the 20%+15% combined page views of SiteCatalyst and HBX). Simply put, Google Analytics might be very widely used, it is implemented on web sites that receives, overall, less traffic than Omniture and VisualSciences.With the recent tsunami of changes at WebTrends, it will be interesting to see if their market shares will erode in the future. Coremetrics getting out at 2% seems a bit low, especially considering Forrester's most recent positioning put them with the Leaders, with a stronger strategy than Omniture and show a similar market presence. But that being said, Forrester also shows WebTrends with an even stronger market presence in the same quadrant, which I find a bit odd.
I'm curious to hear you about this first analysis. Does it make sense? Considering WASP looks at actual sites being visited instead of information provided by each vendor, could it reveal a more accurate market picture or be somehow biased?
6 comments:
Well, as an analyst, I say it's hard to go against the data here. Kudo for your iniative of implmenting some analytics of your own in WASP (which I love by the way, and urge everyone to donate a little something!!).
I guess you're the only one out there with so much data about installations. Don't forget that, in WebTrends and Coremetrics cases, you do not collect information about sites that still analyze web server logs instead of tagging (still a LOT). But I would say, gosh, 8,000 installations of the new version must be giving a pretty fair view of what's out there.
Hi Stephane,
Thanks for writing WASP! It's really helpful, especially in ad hoc situations.
The differences in distribution between sites and page views makes sense - GA is built for smaller sites (isn't there a limit to the number of page views in a month), while Omniture is the high-end tool for large-scale, database-driven ecommerce sites.
I find it really interesting that it's been downloaded 8000 times in the last month, and only used on 10,000 sites - that's 1.25 sites analyzed per download. That seems to be a small number of uses per download. Given that, I would guess that its usage distribution is heavily non-normal - you probably have a set of heavy-users and a set of non-users (or multiple groups).
Can you find out how many of the downloads actually contributed site analyses?
Also, does WASP work on ALL sites being visited, or only sites for which WASP is activated (where results are viewed)?
If it's for activated sites, then it could be a good profile of the active web analytics practitioner community - I'd be interested in hearing others' thoughts on the marketshare representation.
Hi Stephane,
Do you know if Omniture or HBX have a built-in tag viewer/troubleshooter? Coremetrics has a rather nice one, which may be why people analyzing sites w/CM would have less need for another solution. That could skew the apparent market share distribution.
angie
Yes, in fact, both Omniture and WebSideStory have their own kind of "debugger".
Stephane, wonderful job with WASP. It has been such a wonderful help with implementations and a source of amusement/curiosity/joy while surfing the 'net.
One thing. I think the WASP may under-report Omniture tags. We have run into and currently are using a non-traditional implementation method for a couple of clients. It consists of a universal tag that calls a helper file which contains all of the Omniture logic. Variables are fired depending on whether the page satisfies a list of conditions contained in the Helper file. So when WASP crawls the sites, it doesn't "see" the universal page tag.
If you'd like to take a look at an example, check out www.pandora.com.
Let me know if you have any questions.
maigari: in theory, WASP is supposed to catch those conditions because contrary to most tools, WASP doesn't parse the source code, it looks at the DOM (Document Object Model) to see if a specific web analytics tool is present. I will investigate and certainly have it fixed for the next release!
Stéphane
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