Not a moment too soon

Yahoo has launched a beta release of Yahoo! Web Analytics, the lovechild of its IndexTools acquisition earlier this year.

Part of Yahoo's Merchant Solutions suite, the first release of Web Analytics includes reporting and data analysis tools for Yahoo's existing hosted e-commerce customers. Updates will go live through '08 and '09.

Currently, only Yahoo! Merchant Solutions Standard, Merchant Solutions Professional and Yahoo! Store clients are eligible for the beta. Admins marked "Store owner" will see a new Yahoo! Web Analytics header, under which they'll see a link marked "Get Started," which will enable them to power analytics for their e-commerce stores.

Until its IndexTools buy, Yahoo's been light on analytics offerings, preferring instead to focus on social media and mobile acquisitions. In contrast, rival Google used 2008 to debut a number of new analytics tools, including Ad Manager, an ad management service for small-biz publishers; Insights for Search; Google Trends for Websites; and Google Ad Planner.

Google Analytics, its flagship site traffic and conversion analysis service, went live in 2005.