The origin story of Google Analytics

That was a great read! I've been doing this long enough that I still complain about how much I hate GA compared to the old Urchin. I used Urchin for years and loved it. I was all excited to see what it had become as it changed to GA, and it was just... blah. It went from this super incredibly powerful tool that gave me access to all sorts of stats I needed, to this... I dunno... seemingly random assortment of things that seemed like would only excite someone that worked at Google or had AdWords on their site. That was, of course, probably the goal, so I suppose they succeed, but damn I still miss the old Urchin numbers I'd see every day. They were useful for webmasters and sys admins. GA is useful for those trying to see more ads (not that there's anything wrong with that, but that ain't me).

Re: The origin story of Google Analytics

#5

Post by bayonetz » Fri, Nov 18, 2016, 2:55 PM UTC

rwmj wrote: post #3

Also the reason why you sometimes see utm_campaign=... (and other utm_*) appearing in URL query strings. https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1033863?hl=en

I like the different acronym mistakes people always (and very authoritatively) make for utm. "It stands for Universal Task Module" "Nope, it stands for Universal Tracking Monitor!" ... inevitably the old guy jumps in, "Kids, let me tell you about back in the day when we used Urchin"

Re: The origin story of Google Analytics

#6

Post by buro9 » Fri, Nov 18, 2016, 3:12 PM UTC

The lessons learned at the bottom are fantastic. This is a must-read.

Re: The origin story of Google Analytics

#7

Post by fzn » Fri, Nov 18, 2016, 3:38 PM UTC

Urchin 4 continued our tradition of supporting way, way too many random platforms (Google still has Urchin 4 help: check out the OS support… ever heard of Yellow Dog Linux?).

Heck yeah! Yellow Dog was one of first GNU/Linux distro I attempted to use, back in 2k2 (Or was it SUSE 6.4? Both ran too sluggishly for desktop use on my 5400/120, tho.)

Here's the trial Urchin 5 for RedHat 6, btw. https://web.archive.org/web/20060223041140/http://download.u...

Re: The origin story of Google Analytics

#8

Post by m3rc » Fri, Nov 18, 2016, 4:27 PM UTC

Long path up to just getting blocked by no-script

Re: The origin story of Google Analytics

#9

Post by SippinLean » Fri, Nov 18, 2016, 4:37 PM UTC

rwmj wrote: post #3

Also the reason why you sometimes see utm_campaign=... (and other utm_*) appearing in URL query strings. https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1033863?hl=en

For a while the JS that Google handed off to you was "urchin.js"

Re: The origin story of Google Analytics

#10

Post by patmcguire » Fri, Nov 18, 2016, 4:45 PM UTC

Token ring in 1995? I guess a lot changes in 20 years. Networking was very different then, ethernet cards were like $600 in '93

https://books.google.com/books?id=mhAEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA67&dq=et...