Google Analytics vs Omniture

We use Omniture's Site Catalyst tools for web site analytics across www.westernaustralia.com and all of the connected Tourism Western Australia eMarketplace sites. There's been a mad rush on stats lately, initiated by the CEO, so I've been waist deep in Omniture stats coming to terms with an area of web development to which I've never paid much attention.

Omniture costs money and until the other day I was under the impression Google Analytics was a paid service as well. Silly me. Until now I've been displaying AdSense ads on this blog to get a rough idea of page views and not a lot else. You may have noticed I don't care much for AdSense.

I finally decided to have a look at Analytics and after realising it is a free service I signed up. Much to my suprise, the stats available are very comprehensive and while I imagine Analytics is taregetting a different group of sites than Omniture, I'm struggling to see many advantages to going with an Omniture solution. Customisation would be a biggie and I've heard Analytics stats are big shonky at times, which is kind of important ;-)

Analytics is now live on this blog via a simple bit of JS and I'm dying to know how you're arriving here and how often you return. It's all fascinating stuff and I've been watching my "readership" increase slowly but surely over the last year so some additional detail will be welcome.