Yahoo relaunches IndexTools as Web Analytics

Yahoo on Wednesday announced the rebranding of IndexTools as Yahoo Web Analytics (beta). Currently an enterprise product, the move brings it closer to being a consumer and small business tool, although it's not available to everyone just yet.

Yahoo acquired IndexTools back in early April and promptly made it a free service. Its big advantage over Google Analytics is that the information is updated within a few minutes of user activity. In comparison, stats from Google tend to take about 24 hours, however anyone can sign up for it. Both products feature colorful, easy-to-read charts and graphics for data reporting, deep tie-ins with each company's ad services, and a single-service user log-in that works with other company properties.

According to a post on Yahoo's blog the updated version of the service is already out to advertisers and third-party application developers, with Yahoo Small Business users to follow. If you try to sign-up on the new site, there's simply a wait list where you can subscribe to updates. Yahoo's Director of Data Insights Dennis Mortensen says the easiest way to get your hands on this before Q4 is to become an advertiser.

You can read more about the changeover here. I've also embedded a five-minute overview of what the service did (five months ago) after the break.

Yahoo's new Web analytics dashboard is clean and colorful, although unless you're an advertiser you're not bound to see it until 2009.

(Credit: Yahoo Inc.)