Yahoo takes a play from Google’s aquisition book

On the heels of Yahoo’s announcement of their acquisition of web analytics purveyor IndexTools, Yahoo announced that the tool will be made available free of charge.

There are some caveats. Current IndexTools customers will be required to sign a standard Yahoo! agreement, and at this time the freebie won’t be for everyone. The masses will have to wait until a later release to take advantage of the tool. During that time Yahoo will likely be tightly integrating IndexTools with their complimentary offerings.

So here’s the analytics landscape by search provider:

Google’s analytics tool: Google Analytics
Microsoft’s analytics tool: adCenter Analytics (previously “Gatineau”)
Yahoo’s analytics tool: IndexTools (for now)
Ask’s analytics tool: Nothing to speak of. They do have “the algorithm” for whatever that’s worth.

Although I’ve never used Index Tools but I’m more than excited to see another compelling offering at no charge.

More on Yahoo and IndexTools: