Google offers Internet users a variety of tools from email to online documents, but few are as useful to so many people as Google Analytics.

[ad#Google Adsense 300×250 in story]Being five years old, Analytics is a relatively young product, but it is widely used by webmasters, IT departments, and executives from large and small business alike. The reason seems to pretty much the same for everyone — it’s easy to setup and use, and it’s powerful.

Of course, there is another reason that Google Analytics is so popular — it’s free. That appeals to smaller businesses that need to access basic stats and larger companies that need complex tracking of campaigns.

Before Google purchased Urchin and launched Analytics, businesses had a couple of choices to track their online presence. The first was the free or inexpensive stats programs that were known more for being inaccurate than anything else. The second was the very expensive corporate applications that were out of the reach of most users.

Google Analytics fixed both of those problems. I’ve talked to numerous large companies over the years that have either moved entirely to Analytics or are using it as part of their collection and analyzing process.

I recently spoke with Phil Mui, Group Product Manager for Google Analytics, about how Analytics changed the way people look at Web stats. One of the big changes is actually the way we as users interact with each other.

For instance, Mui said that most marketing organizations these days don’t just run a campaign on a company’s Web site. They have a social networking strategy, website strategy, advertising strategy and perhaps other avenues of getting the word out. Those all need to be tracked and accounted for, which Analytics does with little effort from the user.

As someone that’s been around the Web for more than 15 years, I understand a lot of the older terminology of pageviews and what they are. While those measurements are still important, Mui said Analytics is becoming more of a “cross media measurement platform,” adding that “it’s an area we recognize to be important.”

The Web has gone beyond static HTML pages, and now embraces apps and Ajax, leaving us with the need to track Events, Campaigns and multiples of both, in addition to traditional pageviews and visitors.

As a long time Urchin and Google Analytics user, the decisions I make for The Loop are based, in part, on analyzing the data from the stats. I can see how a story is doing, who is linking to it, and if it is generating revenue from Adsense.

Using this data, I can determine if that story works for the site. Indirectly, those decisions affect every reader of the site too. If something doesn’t do well, chances are you won’t see it again.

Without that data, I would be running blind, trying to figure out what works and what doesn’t.

Mui said that Google uses feedback from its certified partners and users to determine what types of features and measurements go into making up Google Analytics.

Google is also a member of the Web Analytics Association, which keeps the company actively involved in analytics at the ground level.

Google Analytics is free for anyone to use — all you have to do is sign-up or use your existing Gmail account. Implemeting it on your website is very easy, especially if you use a platform like WordPress — there are plug-ins that will automatically insert the code for you.