Google has made two major changes to its analytics offering - one, it has introduced a paid version with a $150,000 price point - and two, it has added real time functionality to the free version, a feature that shows what is happening on the site at that moment.

Already Papa John's, Travelocity, Gucci and Transunion have signed up for the premium service, Google says. Now the question is, who else is best suited for this new service?

First of all, investigate, obviously, the new functionality in the free version. The Real-Time reports are only in the new version of Google Analytics. They are in the Dashboards tab now and will move to the Home tab in the updated interface next week. A user gets access to Real-Time reports if he or she is an Administrator on the Analytics account, or if if he or she has access to a profile without profile filters. Sign up for early access here.

For companies consider the paid version, clearly cost is a factor. Assuming a company can absorb it, the following should be including among a prospective user's considerations:

Were data ownership, data retention, and lack of a formal SLA agreement or extensive support reasons for not relying on the earlier Google Analytics? If those were the only barriers, take a look at the paid version but it addresses those issues, says Search Engine Journal.  Included in the paid version are four-hour data freshness, dedicated processing power, a Service Level Agreement, up to 50 custom variables, attribution modeling and a higher level of product support that includes training, it notes.

"We learned from some of our largest customers that they have some specific needs that the current version of Google Analytics can't meet in their entirety," Google said in a blog post.

Do you need even more horse power for your analytics than this? Then move on, writes Forrester’s Joseph Stanhope in a blog post.  "The initial iteration of GA Premium attempts to remediate many of the traditional user concerns that stifled its adoption as a primary web analytics tool in the enterprise," he writes. "Is the transformation complete? It is not; at this early stage GA Premium is not a substitute for an established enterprise implementation in many cases."

Can you hold off on making a decision? Then wait. There is going to be downward price pressure at the high end of the market as a result of GA Premium, Stanhope adds. The "flat annual fee is less – in some cases a lot less – than many large scale users currently spend on web analytics. This gives users who are under pressure to contain costs a new option and puts pressure on established paid web analytics vendors to consider how their pricing can remain competitive under these conditions."