Web Analytics is software that measures your website’s visitor traffic. It is vital to understanding who visits your site, where they came from, and what they did while they were there. If you read yesterday’s post on blog traffic terms, understand that these are the measurements taken by web analytics.
Getting Hooked Up
There are two ways web analytics works: as a web service or as server-side software.
As a service is the most common. A tracking script is placed in the HTML code of your blog template (footer.php in WordPress). Everytime a page in your blog is accessed by visitors, the scripts sends data back to the analytics service. You see your analytics data by logging in to a website.
Most web hosts provide visitor tracking services that make use of the mountains of data generated by your web server’s visitor logs. There is stuff here that a web service cannot access. The problem with this method is that what is provided by your hosting company is usually cheap garbage, and a worthwhile solution is expensive (and it has to be installed on your server).
Free Analytics For the Win
There are several web services that offer a free version of their web analytics. Most of them have a paid version and a free version. The paid version lets you see more information over a longer time period, or lets you see more kinds of information. In other words, the free versions are limited. There are many of these kinds of services available, but only a few stand out and are well-known and trusted.
Site Meter
Site Meter is one of the older web services available, but they’ve undergone some recent changes. Site Meter is a great basic service for the beginner, as there isn’t too much here to overwhelm. The premium version is $6.95/mo. The free version does not give you information on referral search keywords (what words a visitor searched on before arriving at your blog). The free version must display a Site Meter icon on the web page. The free version is quite limited in what it offers, but like I said, it’s good if you’re just starting out.
StatCounter
StatCounter is another free service, and this one lets you make the “bug” invisible on the web page. StatCounter will show you keyword drill-downs and other things that Site Meter will not. Unfortunately, unless you upgrade, you will only be able to see this information for the previous 500 visitors. If you get over 500 visitors a day, this isn’t worth much. StatCounter charges from $9 to $29 a month. More traffic means you get charged more. I find StatCounter’s interface clunky and inconvenient.
Google Analytics
The Big G! The features and data you get with Google Analytics is simply mind-blowing. However, beginners can still use it just fine (as long as you can copy and paste the tracking code into the HTML of your blog’s template). Google Analytics presents a convenient dashboard that shows your analytics info in a simple fashion.
You can drill down to the details… and boy, do you get details! Let me put it this way, people teach classes and write books about how to use Google Analytics. But do not let that scare you off. You can use it in a simple fashion and only drill down to the details when you’re ready.
I’ve used both Site Meter and StatCounter, and neither of them holds a candle to Google Analytics (I’m sure they love hearing that, too, but oh well).
Quantcast
Who? Quantcast is a free web service I use in addition to Google Analytics. Quantcast takes your visitors’ IP address and determines where your visitors come from, geographically. It then compares that data to freely available U.S. Census information. This provides you with true demographic information on your visitors, such as the percentage of females and males or an income breakdown. It’s truly awesome.
OK, That’s Nice… What Do I DO with All of this Data?
That’s the magic question, isn’t it? You can have all the info you want, but what you really need is:
- Formulate a traffic-building strategy from it
- Respond to fluctuations and changes in your traffic
- Use traffic information to modify your SEO tactics
- Adjust your social media stategy
- Be prepared when shopping for a link building service
My biggest issue with Google Analytics is its lack of real time tracking…Anyhow, here’s one more tip for the question of…
What Do I DO with All of this Data?
Take your Quantcast info – and package it as a blog advertisers info pack
GA is definitely the gorilla. But there are a few limitations that may trip people up, like max 50 profiles.
@Friedbeef: There’s a package called Woopra that’s free & does realtime, it’s in beta but see if you can jag an account!
Hey Michael,
It sounds like if you had to choose you would pick Google Analytics out of the above? If it is a fair question, what is your single pick? Thanks in advance…
David J. Parnell
Communication Expert
@David – I don’t make any pretense of objectivity on this. I use Google Analytics and I like it quite a bit. I also use Quantcast.
I have been using Statcounter and Google Analytics and those have been suitable for my needs. Personally I like Statcounter because it has so clear dashboard. It is easy and fast to use.
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How do I install the HTML on Blogger and WordPress.com?
This is a problem for me.
In blogger, add an html/javascript thingy at the bottom and paste it in. For wordpress.com, I don’t think you can use it at all, since javascript is not allowed.