Chartbeat Archive

Today Google announced the launch of real-time analytics within their Google Analytics service. I’ve been in the web analytics area since the first beta of Webtrends and am glad to see Google finally offering a real-time feature as part of their very popular metrics offering. Real-time stats are critical when you run ad campaigns or are now using social media tools to help spread your marketing messages. When you monitor real-time stats, you can make changes on-the-fly to your campaigns to optimize the heck out of your spend. I also hear from other bloggers that they use real-time metrics tools to monitor for traffic based on adjustments to story titles to see which provide a better response.

Naturally today’s Google Analytics announcement must mean that real-time analytics tools including Clicky, Chartbeat, SiteMeter, Woopra and ExtremeTracking are dead. Maybe these tools should consider a quick pivot to real-time daily deals (I kid!).

Blogger Holden Page immediately noted, “Google Analytics went real-time. In one fell swoop hit about four startups, one of which I use religiously (Clicky) with an iron fist.”

I like the blog post by the Clicky team – they always use pepper sarcasm into their posts. The title of their blog post reads, “SHUT. DOWN. EVERYTHING.”

They note, “Hmm… did anyone actually read the announcement that Google made today? This isn’t “real time Google Analytics”, this is a single report in GA that is real time. The rest of GA remains the same. This is more akin to Chartbeat, to be used as a real time compliment to a standard analytics package, rather than a full standalone real time service like Clicky is. But I guarantee you Chartbeat will be just fine, as will everyone else. We’ve all had, and continue to have, plenty of advantages over GA other than real time data.”

They then link to a number of tweets that signal death for Clicky, Woopra and Chartbeat. The quotes include:

• “Sites like Clicky will soon be out of business”
• “getclicky and chartbeat ought to run for the hills”
• “Is this the beginning of the end of Woopra?”
• “Google killing off Chartbeat”

I am still waiting to see proof where death of a service occurred because a large company put out an offering in that space. I guess the closest we could come would be all those tools that built on top of Twitter only to have Twitter build their own – but remember I warned against that many moons ago.

Continue reading “Chartbeat, Clicky & Other Real-Time Analytics Tools Must Be Dead…Right?” »