As soon as I read the news about Google and Urchin, I could totally imagine some of the speculation that would be going on in the forums. So I headed right over to some webmaster and SEO forums to read the buzz. Sure enough, I was right. Here are few comments with a link to the forum threads and the official news story.

“Google is growing up to be a BIG BROTHER.”

“I wonder if webmasters will flee en masse from Urchin. I would - the less Google knows about my website, the better. Traffic monitoring combined with search algorithms will not be a positive thing for the SEO community in my opinion. I see this as another way to leverage statistical data for Google, and I also see it leading to more of the “filthy linking rich” problem.”

“This scares me. not that I’m a bit on the fancy side or anything, but just how much freaking raw statistical data will they have access to? …sure, they get around by spidering, and they have toolbar data from at least half the webmasters in the business, but just how much raw webstat usage data have they had their hands on before? … Hw much of the market share does Urchin have? They are going to see a whole ‘nother ballgame here! The picture they get by the numbers is going to be astounding.”

“I see NBC, NASA, Qualcomm, NHL, BT and other big names using Urchin. Maybe they want to see what is going on behind the scenes to compete with yahoo-overture/msn customers? “

WebMasterWorld Thread
Google buying Urchin

SEOchat Thread
G buys Urchin

DigitalPoint always has a more positive spin on things. KUDOS TO SHAWN for the forum with the best attitude! DigitalPoint Thread

The Official News Story
Google to Buy Web Analytics Company

I will be adding more comments from other forums as the news speads. Most people have not picked up on this and started talking about it yet. But I’m sure they will be talking soon!