Web Analytics Data Changing User Behavior?

Many of us are familiar with providing web analytics data via an overlay. I believe Fireclick was first to this party with their Site Explorer tool...WebTrends has a product called SmartView...other vendors have their own versions as well. This rich analytics data has historically been viewed only by those using these analytics tools.

Whether or not you like the term Web 2.0, many of the new implementations of the web-as-a-platform are changing how we think of analytics. Ajax is changing how we think of tracking visitors, visits and views. API's are opening up everywhere, providing a healthy exchange of data. Del.icio.us is my favorite example of a disruptive tool, as they change our paradigms of saving, sharing and searching.

So, how about web analytics? What's new and interesting and disruptive in our world? Here's one approach that I like. Mybloglog.com, previously noted here, looks to have an API that shows a lot of promise. I can't find any information on their site about it, but you can see an example of what they're doing at this cool Del.icio.us tool site (hover over the links in the article).

Wow. Are visitors more likely to click on the links that are rated higher, thus changing visitor behavior? Perhaps so. Amazon has done this for years. Others do as well, but I've not seen someone directly using web analytics data to do this before. Are there other examples out there?

Filed in: analytics technology