·  From which search ads or listings got the highest click-through rates and which key word searches or what time of day the ads ran pulled the highest traffic …

·  To what percentage of visitors bounced out of your site ASAP and from which web page(s) they bailed …

·  To the cost of gaining each new customer/potential buyer (cost-per-acquisition).  

Analytics let you slice and dice performance by sales report criteria, such as per-dollar-of-purchase, by merchandise categories, maybe even by geography. All the tracked data feeds a web analytics report “grinder” to produce ROI (return on investment) and ROAS (return on advertising spend) sausage. Such “sausage” then plugs back into changes in search ad copy or headlines or artwork, into web site and page design tweaks to optimize paid-ad and organic search listings. Applied web analytics can change search marketing plans in the blink of an eye. 

Now that Yahoo has finally thrown down on rival Google with Yahoo! Web Analytics, here is the ISEdb.com (Dario Borghino’s 10/11/2008 Search Engine Daily Lead) list of projected benefits of Yahoo! Analytics Vs. Google Analytics. 

Focus on Business Partners and Users: Yahoo! acquired IndexTools: Analytics in May, 2008, and developed the tool to beta test stage, planning gradual roll out to 13,000 small businesses with e-commerce sites. As Yahoo! Web Analytics is targeted specifically to Yahoo’s business partners and selected advertisers, the tool is being “wrung out” by business-oriented users focused on market performance, optimization and click-through rates. That focus allows for multi-user access to Yahoo’s analytics tool and also supports advanced sales reports that sort by user-designated fields. 

Biggest Diff: Real-Time Reporting: Reports and the above-noted User Defined Queries will be available through Yahoo! Web Analytics within minutes … rather than 24-to-48 hours after your web site visitors acted and their actions were collected from the data stream. Take Note: Any e-commerce web site interested in Instant Pulse Checks and Immediate Feedback, for whom two days ago is old news. Other than being a Cyber Big Brother stalking every visitor through your web site, this is as real-time as it gets. 

Raw Can Be Better: Web analytics tools that store “aggregated data” have already decided how you will slice-and-dice the information into pre-set or canned reports. Since Yahoo! Web Analytics stores data in raw or non-aggregated form, you can ask the tool new questions – those User Defined Queries noted above – and create new reports that answer your own questions, pulled from current and historical performance data. Your own questions might involve grouping or sorting by your own prices, by arbitrary locations (north or south of the Mason-Dixon line), and by hierarchies of categories (such as first by high- mid- and low-price points, then by sales territory and zip code). 

Easy Use: Yahoo! claims its analytics tool is more flexible in both letting users filter and segment data as they wish using drag-and-drop features, as well as build reports quickly using custom report wizards.

Touchez, Google Analytics? ISEdb’s review speculated that “Yahoo! Web Analytics could become a worthy competitor of its Google-branded counterpart;” but we won’t know right away. The benefits ticked off above came from Yahoo’s own press releases, FAQs and blog postings by the original owners of IndexTools, now Yahoo Web Analytics. Because the newly improved analytics tool is being rolled out in gradual phases from now to early 2009, and because it targets a narrower market than Google Analytics, it’s still too soon to tell.

As ISEdb’s Dario Borghino put it: “Yahoo sums up the main advantages against its competitors in three main points, not without indirectly hinting at Google Analytics as a somewhat inferior product.” C’est la guerre in Big General Search Engine World.