Google to release a web measurement tool to track target audiences

Google looks to be entering the market Hitwise and Neilsen are already competing in - audience tracking online, as reported in the Wall Street Journal, Google to Offer a Tool To Measure Web Hits.

This differs from web log reporting in that it tracks website visitors across different websites to provide a behavioural picture of audiences by demographics.

I've used the Mosaic audience profiling tool within Hitwise to gain a good idea of whether my agency's site was effectively targeting the correct audience (it is) and to look at other websites with which we shared our audience.

This benchmarking has allowed us to identify appropriate press and magazine channels to target for communications activities, to identify websites that we may consider partnering with and to get a clearer picture of what our customers want and do to improve our publications and services.

It will be interesting to see how effective Google's service will be in the same area. With over 130 million unique visitors per day the organisation already has a wealth of data on what people do online and where they go.