Website statistics and tracking

I have now started to think about website stats and tracking. Mostly because I am getting more serious about thesleepygeek and need to know what kind of traffic I am generating. After some homework I have found a number of websites that track site statistics and each of them seem to have their own strengths. I often am looking for the option that “just works”. I am a firm believer that 10 features that work flawlessly is better than 20 that are only ok.

Google Analytics is the product that I chose in the end for just those reasons. It has the most popular type of information you need to know about your site and it’s traffic. Where people are accessing it from, what kind of browser they are using, what site they came from, what page they looked at, etc, etc. The site is very nicely laid out as well; a very clean looking summary of all your stats and then it offers the option of digging down to see more specific information. It has the option of sending you daily or weekly reports with all the same information you would find on the main dashboard page. To install it on my different sites was absolutely simple. I opened a single account and was able to track stats from more than one URL. This site, was the easiest because someone has made a plugin for Wordpress. I have another site that runs on Gallery2 which hosts my family pictures. It was a simple google search away and instructions with clear steps to enter the generated code on the correct line. DONE!

I have also used in the past statcounter.com. They have a great service with about the same feature set. It seems to be a little more robust but it also is more confusing to find the information you want when you need to dig. I would recommend them if Google Analytics is not your cup of tea.

I did a search for “free web stats comparison” on google was amazed at how many options there are. So now I am going to turn it around. What do you use for web stats? Email me at marcus@hamaker.net.