Which Statistics tool do you prefer?

[navjotjsingh]

Measuring statistics to keep track of your blog's performance is very necessary. Which blog statistics tool do you prefer and why?

I use mainly Google Analytics and Awstats since they easy and powerful to use. Awstats is easy unless you are installing it yourself on your hosting. :D

[narendra.s.v]

its definitely Google Analytics and next Woopra with nice live stats :D

[Indyan]

I am using Google Analytics and Statcounter.
Previously I was also using Firestats. Never got around to installing it after I changed hosts. It's not a bad pluging for wordpress.

[sarahG]

I've found www.w3counter.com to be one of the most accurate plus it's pretty comprehensive. I also have AWStats available on my server, however that's very inaccurate for blogs due to the number of bots a blog attracts, I have the WordPress.com Stats plugin too which is good for seeing views on the various posts/pages.

I also run my feeds through FeedBurner and have their site stats running too.

[ap4a]

I use a combination of AWStats, Wordpress blog stats, MyBlogLog and Feedburner stats.

[navjotjsingh]

I am using Google Analytics and Statcounter.
Previously I was also using Firestats. Never got around to installing it after I changed hosts. It's not a bad pluging for wordpress.

I have heard a lot of bad things about Firestats major being using too high CPU resources to the tune that Hosting companies banned few sites using Firestats plugins.

[Indyan]

I never got any complaints, but it may be true.

[wahmsuzanne]

I use Google Analytics and don't know anything about any of the others. For those who know more ... what do the others "tell" you that you can't get from Analytics? What are the advantages? Are they free? Are they difficult to install? Thanks for shedding any light on this ... I was hoping to do a blog post on this very subject so if you've done a post on one of these tools ... or all of them ... please let me know so I can reference your post on my site and send my visitors your way too. Thanks! *SmiLes* Suzanne

[Indyan]

I was also using (http://www.pallab.net/2007/06/28/reinvigorate-smart-web-metrics/) reinvigorate for a while (http://www.reinvigorate.net/) - its pretty, but then I removed it as too many tracking tools increase page load time and is unneccesary.

[sizzler_chetan]

Awstats, analytics, and woopra. All the 3 i use for the same blog of mine as i can't just trust on a single traffic analysis tool.

[sarahG]

For those who know more ... what do the others "tell" you that you can't get from Analytics? What are the advantages? Are they free? Are they difficult to install?

I think most of what's been mentioned here are free. To explain a few

AWStats is a server based stats software. Most non-windows based hosting packages have this as one of their main stats packages available to the user. It works by reading the logs created on the server for every hit made to it (ie. a file request of some sort be it a html/php/asp file, image, pdf etc). It formats the logs into an easier view for reading. Server logs used to be considered more accurate as they counted every visit to the server, however this now includes the tonnes of spam bots out there, and if the software (AWStats in this case) doesn't realise that the visitor is a bot then it's classed as a person, hence why a lot of stats from AWStats can be heavily inaccurate. However they still give you a great deal of information.

Google Analytics - This uses JavaScript to count and gather visitor information. That means that pretty much most bots are ignored as they don't 'execute' the JavaScript on your site. However it also means that visitors without JavaScript running will also not be counted. Some people turn JavaScript off for their own reasons, some office techs will switch it off for security purposes, and some just don't have it running due to the software/browser they're using. I'm sure some screen readers won't run JavaScript for example.

W3Counter - This is my recommended choice for a counter. It's free for one site and then you pay to add additional sites to your account. It operates on both JavaScript for visitor information, but you also put a small image/icon on your site which will be displayed and will pick up a hit for all visitors who are downloading images ie. a larger percentage than those who can execute JavaScript. This means that although you may lose a bit of info due to JS not running, the visitor will still be picked up providing they view the image, as the image will report a visitor hit to the server.

With the latter, most bots will still be ignored as they are not human and not using a browser. They're scripts that simply access the page in a certain way, and that way doesn't usually include downloading the images. Of course it also means those visitors who do not have JS running nor download images for whatever reason will not be counted, but this is a smaller percentage lost than Analytics or other JS only based stats software will report.

MyBlogLog is also a free, JS enabled stats counter, as is Feedburner. Feedburner is completely free and allows you to burn your feed through them too, and you can use their Site Stats which just requires you to add a line of code into each of your theme files in the appropriate place and it will count visitors.

If you want server based stats but don't have AWStats then I also recommend Tracewatch, which is a PHP/MySQL based tracker/stats software. It will pick up bots though, but it's a pretty good and comprehensive piece of software.

Oh, for an analysis of various site monitoring I wrote about this last year (http://www.stuffbysarah.net/2007/11/30/how-accurate-are-statistics/)

[ghing]

I used google analytics, statcounter and sitemeter on my blogs....

[DeskCoder]

I started using SiteMeter, then switched over to GA. Gotta love Google.

[EmmaB]

I use both Woopra and Awstats. I love the desktop client for Woopra and would love to try out the chatting feature. Only reason I dont is because I dont want visitors to think the blog is spamming them.

[Rarst]

I've started with AWStats (provided by hosting). It's nice but when spam bots started making frequent visits that quickly devalued stats from it.

Later installed Google Analytics. Really solid, still actively use it to look up specific stuff.

Later instaleld MyBlogLog. Totally crappy for stats, tried it for registering MyBlogLog visitors without having a widget. Will probably remove it.

Later installed Woopra. Nice one if it actually worked as intended but it's very beta and very bugged. Using it for quick lookups what's going on today.

Using FeedBurner but without stats. Only track subscriber count.

I am also curious about heatmaps and have ClickHeat bookmarked but hadn't yet got to install it.

[topen]

im using Statcounter Woopra Google Analytics , but i don;t know the best one

[athlon24]

Before I am using awstats but I shifted to just google analytics. I think, it is much organized. I don't know for you guys, but for me, Google Analytics is enough for what I needed to know about my stats. Everything is there already I think, and for my ranking in google search, I use Google webmaster tools.