When did Web Analytics start? That is a great question.
Lets go back to the beginning of (Internet) time...when did the Internet start?
President Dwight Eisenhower creating ARPA in 1958 (later named DARPA) as a response to the Sputnik 1 launch along with the SAGE program to protect the US from space based nuclear attack. That resulted in ARPANET going live in 1969.
October 29, 1969 at 10:00pm to be precise. That is the day the first HTTP packet went sailing, and the first DARPA scientist recorded its success in a log (even though that log was actually a manual entry in a notebook.)
(October 29, 1969 10:00pm PST. The first Log)
OK, so maybe that is pushing it. But my point is that Web Anlaytics has been around for as long as the Web has, and it has evolved at much the same pace.
Here are some major Internet milestones:
- 1971 sent first e-mail via network
- 1973 first file transfered over the network
- 1985 ARPA is referenced on the TV show Benson
- 1990 ARPANET transferred from the Department of Defense to University Systems
- 1993 Mosaic Browser first released to navigate the World Wide Wed
- 1995 - 2000 the "dot com bubble"
- 2000 - 2004 more than 50% of dot-coms survive the crash proving the vitality and durability of core e-businesses
- 2004 - present Web 2.0
So when did Web Analytics really set root? Some say it all started with the humble page counter and some Perl scripts.
