Last friday Google publicly announced a new way to view traffic on your web site; by using the web site itself.

This is a replacement for the clumsy Site Overlay feature that has existed since the Urchin analytics system was absorbed by the software giant.

It looks like a great way to visualize the traffic on a site for others, and superb artillery in the ongoing conversation about The Fold.

I made a short screencast to demonstrate the current feature set:

I’m excited for a heatmap, a la crazyegg, otherwise I think this is a fantastic step forward.