Mozilla working on web metrics solution

Techcrunch reports that the Mozilla Corporation is working on a "stealth" web analytics project, which will integrate with the Firefox web browser. The new metrics solution aims to provide accurate and accessible data about website traffic and usage.

According to the article, the project is in a very early stage of development and does not have an official name yet. It will measure site traffic for Firefox users only, but with a market share estimated between 20% and 40% (depending on geographic location and study method), the open source browser provides an impressive user base, and a corresponding large data set.

Techcrunch also makes an interesting categorization of prevalent web metrics techniques: user-based, like Alexa; direct tracking on websites, a la Google Analytics; and measuring based on records from ISPs. Some of those, however, provide strictly traffic data, while others track user behavior with methods like click heatmaps. No word yet which direction Mozilla's project will take.

More info is available at Techcrunch.

In unrelated news, Firefox 3 is almost complete, and will be unleashed upon the web in the coming weeks. A beta is already included in the latest Long Term Support version of the popular Ubuntu Linux distribution, guaranteeing further growth of adoption rates.