This is a New One on Me - Analytics Software IDs Company

[dharrison]

Hi all

This is definitely a new one on me, but one of my customers got approached by a company offering a web analytics software service, I quote:

"he was offering a quite comprehensive service whereby you can view the actual company who is viewing your site along with the words they typed into a search engine, email alerts to various things, it seemed a good tool. "

Sounds fair enough the the main concern (the bit I highlighted) sounds a bit risque. What company is viewing your website?? That would probably revolutionise search in a way, but also would lead to an increase in spamming and surely there is some breach of privacy laws in there somewhere??!?

Can anyone shed any light? Does such a software exist where you can target companies rather than IP addresses? Does it work for the average small business or is this just a load of old nonsense by some clueless donkey who has to drum up business by emailing individuals and making outlandish claims??

[kgun]

It may be possible by combining a visitors real Ip address with a whois lookup or similar tools. Is the assumption that the company get access to your server logs.

[imvain2]

well the seeing what searches were entered into the search engines, that is part of google analytics and many other stats programs. The seeing which company accessed your website is quite a challenge considering that most of the time IP blocks are issued to the ISP and not to the company using the Internet Access, so if they were using TDS DSL for example, their IP address would be registered to TDS and resolve back to TDS's servers. And your browser doesn't submit data with the specifics about the company (or user) that is accessing your website.

See what information your browser sends to a website:
http://www.htaccesstools.com/browser-check/

I would have your customer ask for proof.

[Clarrie]

About eighteen months ago I went to a presentation by a company which had developed a system which did exactly this (Revelations, by Trovus). As kgun suggested, it primarily resolves visitor ip information and relates it to various publicly available databases to add a lot more marketing intelligence to raw analytics. As a marketing person I was quite interested in what they were doing with the information - lots of marketing orientated tools built into the system, and not just "stats for stats sake", including the ability to set alerts for existing customers and prospects visiting the site, creating oportunities for follow up etc.

I tagged it in my own mind as a useful potential tool for the right kind of client - not mass market maybe, but maybe more for companies with low volume, high unit value sales where quality leads are at a premium. Overall I was quite impressed, but as I recall, its not cheap!

well the seeing what searches were entered into the search engines, that is part of google analytics and many other stats programs. The seeing which company accessed your website is quite a challenge considering that most of the time IP blocks are issued to the ISP and not to the company using the Internet Access, so if they were using TDS DSL for example, their IP address would be registered to TDS and resolve back to TDS's servers. And your browser doesn't submit data with the specifics about the company (or user) that is accessing your website.

I asked about this (naturally being a bit of a sceptic) and they claimed to have developed some technical solutions to resolve this, plus they pointed out that the type of larger target company that the system is designed to identify tend to have a more identifiable footprint. I should say the working demo (real, not simulated) was quite impressive, as is their client list, so despite limitations, it does seem to work well enough.

Overall point being that it goes several steps beyond the point where conventional analytics stops.

BTW, I don't have any relationship with the company, so this isn't a plug, just reporting my impressions of what they were offering!

[Clarrie]

Is the assumption that the company get access to your server logs.

Tracking code on each page, similar to Google etc

[Clarrie]

@dharrison see you've added a poll. But DOES it breach privacy laws? Was, and still is, one of my biggest concerns, but resolving ip addresses to companies is not the same as resolving to individuals. Companies aren't protected by privacy laws in the same way. Don't really know enough about how they are dealing with that to comment...

[dharrison]

...Was, and still is, one of my biggest concerns, but resolving ip addresses to companies is not the same as resolving to individuals. Companies aren't protected by privacy laws in the same way.

No you're probably right. Again depending on if you're a business to business or business to customer industry or how small that business is (in my case I am both business and individual).

I agree with imvain2. I think proof is required to support such an outlandish claim.

I was also having a read at http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2...lation/14/made which tackles location data.

[Clarrie]

No you're probably right. Again depending on if you're a business to business or business to customer industry or how small that business is (in my case I am both business and individual).

That would be the sort of thing that would give rise to the greatest concerns.

I was also having a read at http://www.legislation.gov.uk/uksi/2...lation/14/made which tackles location data.

Marginal how this particular piece of legislation would apply in this situation - although it does seem to cover email communications, it's primarily aimed at telecommunications networks and restrictions on the use of position and time data to locate individual users.

I agree with imvain2. I think proof is required to support such an outlandish claim.

Outlandish? Don't think its quite that improbable - as I said, the working example that I saw was quite impressive. Although the chances are it's not perfect, I get the impression that it might have enough value to warrant a proper look for the right client, provided of course that the privacy issues can be satisfactorily resolved.

[michaelhartzell]

"... a quite comprehensive service whereby you can view the actual company who is viewing your site along with the words they typed into a search engine, email alerts to various things .... "

It seems it is possible and here are screen shots.

screenshot for visitors.jpg Here is a screenshot of a software program showing the company names, how they arrived on the website, what pages they viewed and number of visitors.

This does not give information for every company or visitor.

There is a page which shows more complete information for each company.

screenshot for visitors2.jpg
This gives more details about the IP address, specific location and the views of the various visitors. (what and when)

Yes, it is helpful for those who work with b2b. No, it does not give this info for every visitor.

www.hubspot.com

Clarrie:

Although the chances are it's not perfect, I get the impression that it might have enough value to warrant a proper look for the right client,

I agree. Nothing is perfect but can certainly be helpful.

[wige]

I'm surprised that there is doubt about the availability of the company information - you can get the same information (company that the traffic came from) in Google Analytics as well. Granted, it won't be reported in the same way, or have the business intellegence data backing it that you get from a specialized analytics company. But its there, and really easy to find. Heck, if you write your own analytics program, you can gather the same information. And for the record, this information is considered public domain, and is not covered by any privacy laws in the US, as the data is provided by the company themselves. (Standard note: I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice or a legal opinion. Before acting on this information, consult an actual attorney who practices in your jurisdiction.)

Essentially, to create a report like the one shown above "Visitors from Companies" all they are doing is processing the hostname of the incoming request (this is done by performing a reverse lookup of the visitor's IP address to find who owns it) and then parsing that hostname to determine company it is registered to. T1 and other dedicated broadband lines that are owned by governments, banks, legal firms and major corporations will be registered directly to the company, while small businesses and home users who do not have dedicated IP addresses will show the information from their ISP. Filter the listing to remove known ISPs, and boom, what's left is a fairly accurate list of visitors from corporate and government intranets.