Etsy Stats? Etsy Stats!

Etsy is now allowing sellers to integrate google analytics to track traffic to their sites. This has been in beta for a couple weeks with a small group of users, and has now been extended to all users.

This is something that the previous Etsy leaders had been talking about doing repeatedly, but had never made any real progress on. The new CEO and Tech leader have promised several much-needed improvements in the works, including an overhaul of the search function. The addition of stats are a real step in the right direction and here's hoping it's just the first step of many more.

What I think is siginificant is that Etsy has allowed users to integrate an existing outside service that is both familiar and reliable. In the area of search improvements, they recently announced they will begin using Solr, a powerful open source search server. This looks like a real shift in thinking at Etsy. The founders were somewhat notorious for being insular in their approach to the site, preferring to build from scratch even when reliable alternatives were available.