Definition and History

Author would like to define Web Analytics as the process of analyzing data captured from web sites and converting them to quantifiable reports which can be used to measure the site performance.


Wikipedia defines web analytics as

“The measurement, collection, analysis and reporting of internet data for purposes of understanding and optimizing web usage”

Web Analytics has had its ups and downs, the concept became in the mid 90’s with companies like WebTrends and WebSideStory. As per Ballardvale Research in 1999, the Web analytics market was $141 million, and growing at 200%; in 2000, it reached $400 million. However as the recession hit the 2001 instead of growing at 200% the web analytics shrank by 7%. This lead to consolidation of some of the major players which saw the players in this niche shrinks from 60 to 35. By 2004 Coremetrics, Omniture, Web Trends and WebSiteStory became the market players in this industry. Later Google Analytics which is free also started gaining in popularity especially among