I recently have looked at Google Webmaster and Google Analytics closely. It seems like they are both providing the same services… So should I use Webmaster or Analytics? or both?
The answer is you should use both - since they serve different purposes.
Webmaster
Webmaster can help you to be searched and discovered more easily on the web. From webmaster, you can find out what keywords (ranked by popularity) people are using to discover your website. Also, it has a set of tools that help website owners improve their visibility within the Google search engine (e.g. a tool to submit sitemap).
Setting up Webmaster is very easy. You just need to confirm that you are actually the owner of the site (by putting some snippets of code on to the server).
Analytics
This set of tools is actully not developed within Google, but rather, it was acquired by Google. This is actually a tracking tool for your website. You will be able to find out all the web traffic metrics (e.g. page hits, number of users, location of users, browser used, etc) for your website with Analytics.
In order for Analytics to work, you will need to place a few lines of Javascript on every page of your site. Whenever a page is accessed, the page will send the info to the Analytics server asynchronously. And the Google Analytics webpage will display info about your website nicely.
Eventually Google should merge these two tools together… Probably this is not a high priority for Google for now.
Kenny K who tries to strike rich with blogging.