Google's Urchin analytics software goes public and Includes New Upgrades

Google has announced that the Urchin Software is now in public beta and can be downloaded at urchin.com.

Google says the software is similar to Google Analytics but you install and manage the software on your own servers. The company says the beta software "should only be used for evaluation purposes," and it is not recommended for production environment.

Urchin can be used by businesses that have content behind a security firewall or that have restrictions that will not allow them to use Google Analytics. The software can also be used to do ad-hoc historical log processing for those that want to store their Web analytics on local servers.

According to the Google Analytics Blog the upgrades include:

• More accurate geo-identification of visitors
• Cross-segmentation options similar to Google Analytics
• Ecommerce and campaign tracking
• Improved embedded scheduler to more easily manage processing and re-processing jobs
• Improved user interface
• More robust log processing engine

A 90-day version is available for download. When the software moves out of beta it will be available for $2,995.