Google purchased Urchin web analytics software earlier this year. Now you can benefit from this purchase, for free. Google has launched a free Analytics service for you to track your website’s traffic.

This goes way beyond AWStats or Webalizer. There is a detailed preview on Google’s site where you can see screenshots and read about it.

Additionally, Google has added Conversion University. I’m not sure if this was just launched, but I just noticed it. If you run an e-commerce site or are interested in increasing action by your visitors (example: newsletter sign-ups) this is something to check out.

I’ll be adding Google’s free analytics software to my site within the next day. I actually used to use an older version of Urchin. Unfortunately, it took up a massive amount of server space and I eventually stopped using it.

Conversion is a critical backbones to online advertising spending. For e-commerce site owners this means more money — because visitors are more likely to make a purchase. This means e-commerce site owners spend more money on advertising. That means more money for Google and you.

The bigger picture — Google is going to have your stats to. That raises another question, if you are already running Adsense on your site (or conversion tracking for Adwords advertisers) Google may already be collecting those same stats anyways. I’m planning on talking about this in a later post.

There is one small requirement for you to use this free service — there is a “5M pageview cap per month for non AdWords advertisers.” I wish I could say I didn’t qualify