The information just fell in my mailbox as Charlie Holbrech send out a communication to IndexTools partners & Dennis Mortensen blogged about it: IndexTools (Yahoo!) Web Analytics goes FREE!
Boy oh boy Dennis, for a mindblowing (r)evolution, how’s that for a treat?
So, what does this mean? some paperwork for us, IndexTools partners, to accept the Yahoo! agreement in order to continue using the service for our clients, who will now be able to use the service for FREE!
I wonder when this quicks in exactly? As IndexTools usually prices per month – one of their great flexibilities – does this mean that for clients, as from the May 1st, their product budgets can already be reallocated… to consultancy services? I’m not complaining and it would align nicely with the philosophy of May 1st 
I’ve got this Style Council music in my head now: Walls Come Tumbling Down
The excellent IndexTools support wil remain unaffected but new creation of accounts & projects will have to go through your dedicated account manager in order to avoid a deluge of accounts. Furthermore, Yahoo! does not intend to add any new partnerships or direct clients so let’s make the best of what we have today in terms of accounts set-ups and let’s really start optimizing!
How will this affect the rest of the market? Eric Peterson already blogged about that one in his How Yahoo! buying IndexTools changes Web Analytics post a couple of days ago that you might want to read again, in the light of this official annoucement. Seems that you’re money’s in Eric, it’s free before Xmas 2008
There are 2 breads of Web Analytics out there that will have to react: the other freebies – Google Analytics & Microsoft’s Gatineau – and then the other ones, the paying ones. And I didn’t say expensive however it seems that this definition has kind of moved in the last few hours now! Seems the 10/90 or 10/80/20 rule got also somewhat shifted once again with the reallocation of budgets
One can only stress once again that IndexTools has nothing to be ashamed of in terms of functionalities, goes way beyond Google Analytics, which was already pretty darn good in terms of price/features ratio and the question is open to those paying solutions about how they will react.
Happy, happy times for data driven decision making. Thank you Yahoo! thank you Dennis, let’s shake up this sector we all love & live for because many challenges lay ahead in order to report even better & make those decisions even more accurate.
Cheers from sunny, sunny Brussels,
Aurelie
Christmas … Mother’s Day … May Day … it’s all the same. Interesting times to be sure …
E.
Nice post Aurelie, I talked a lot in my blog about this process (Like here) but I think I failed in the variable ‘t’ (time). I think that what we are gonna be experiencing in this market in the next 6 months, would happened anyways, but in two years. Dennis and Yahoo! just accelerated the process…a mean… A LOT!!!
Fantastic! I’ve been using and promoting Indextools for years, from both the agency and client side, and have always loved it. Props to Indextools – this is good news for the analytics world!
I wrote something about it on my tech review blog. I think the fact is all the big search companies now have their own “analytic” is great. I hope they can start fighting who does it better
Hey folks, looks like we just got slashdotted
the caching system seems to be holding up but do let me know if the site seems slow!
Good, very good indeed.
I like to use different metrics to find the most valuable data. Yahoo rocks one more time before M$ takes it over.
It’s always good to have choices and competition. I’m looking forward to seeing what’s under Yahoo’s hood.
Wow! That is great!
But what about the large / big companies that are after a hosted / software version? These will still have to rely on the paying ones- so still some $$$$ for the paying ones.