Site Stats

One thing I get asked a lot about at work is site stats. Usually, the client wants to know how many visitors they get on any other day along with other data such as where the visitors came from and which search terms they may have used.

So far, I’ve used Google Analytics and PHPMyVisites JS based logging along with Analog on the logs themselves. I’ve also experimented with Mint on one site.

Generally, I’ve found that Analytics requires lots of drilling down to find anything, PHPMyVisites can be a little simplistic (though it is getting more features with each release) and Mint doesn’t provide enough history.

Are there better solutions out that that are cost-effective for relatively small clients?

This article was posted on 9 March 2008 in Software

15 thoughts on “Site Stats”

I have always used Awstats. It doesn't allow you to drill down, but does provide a good overview of all website activity.

I'm with Adam there; Awstats has enough coverage for all the needs I've dealt with. Rob, have you noticed page lag using Google Analytics? It was significant enough in all the sites we used it on to warrant instant removal.

You could have a look at http://getclicky.com/#theotherguys

Nick,

Yeah – I've seen up to 1s delay with some GoogleAnalytics yes. It's only on sites where the customer wants it for that reason.

I'll have a look at awstats and getclicky.

Regards,

Rob..

I'm in agreement over the analytics lag, I've noticed it in a number of sites as an 'end user' (I've not looked at how Analytics does it's stuff to be in a position to say "why hasn't the browser cached it to avoid $lag" or is the lag from analytics "doing it's stuff" and not actually downloading?).

Agree about google analytics, what I don't like is that he never gives the IP addresses which are important for me!
Awstats is a good one, I enjoy using it, the problem is that it's not realTime :( I can only increase the frequency of log parsing…