Google Analytics, Google’s tool for generating detailed visitor stats for web sites, just launched an API, which will finally allow developers to create desktop and online tools that can use and mash up data from Google Analytics with other data on the Internet. This API will also allow developers to create mobile interfaces for Google Analytics for Android or the iPhone, for example.
Developers who are already familiar with other Google APIs should feel right at home with the Google Analytics API, as it uses the same protocol as Google Calendar, Finance, and Webmaster Tools.
Google already gave a number of developers a preview of the API and you can see the fruits of their labor here. These tools, for example, include integration with content management systems and other analytics suites. One easy to install example for an app that uses the Google Analytics API is Polaris, an Adobe AIR widget from Desktop Reporting that displays basic information about your site.
Of course, Google Analytics, even with this API, does not give you real-time information about the traffic on your site. For that, you will still have to resort to other tools like Woopra, which uses a desktop application as it default interface, and which also offers an API.
