What web traffic analysis tools do you use?

[MichaelCorfman]

Most successful webmasters use either web analytics tools or log analyzers to better understand how their sites are used by visitors. I thought it would be interesting to find out what tools GPWA webmasters use, and maybe hear an interesting story or two about what some of our webmasters have seen using these tools.

Michael

[AussieDave]

Hi All,

I've just recently switched to Google Analytics, I'm more than happy with the results.


I used to use the generic web stats found in cpanel, but, I like my information at a glance. I certainly get this & more with this new tracking.



Cheers



Dave

[Nandakishore]

I am using google analytics for quite a while and quite satisfied with it.

Nandakishore
Online Casino Newsroom

[Ziggy]

I voted, but in addition, I use Statcounter which has shown during the month of April that some visitors come from the GPWA seal page to visit my site. Some are Aff Mgrs and have then emailed me. I can see this through the "path" function of Statcounter which shows me (a) where they came from, (b) where they went to on my site and then when I check an email against the stats it follows the pattern and the visitors path.

I believe if webmasters start looking, they will see that visitors are coming to their site from the Verified Seal page, at least in my own recent experience.

[kwblue]

I use Statcouner also. I find it much easier to look at than Google Analytics (which I have on several of my sites, but don't really use because I don't like the format)

[universal4]

I used to use awstats....but I hate perl and I really HATE the cpu overhead anything perl adds to a server.

I now use Smarter Stats.

The reports are nice and very in depth.

On the server side there are many features, you can easily add users to sites and define how long to keep smarter logs for each site. The config files for each site are kept in xml files so they can be edited manually if wanted and if you back up the configs you have basically backed up everything needed to recover from a disaster. You also want to backup the smarter logs if you get rid of the web server logs on a regular basis.

The server will parse the logs by unc path or ftp (this is the method I prefer) however I do recommend you do this on a gigabit backbone.

Rick
Universal4

[Nandakishore]

I use Statcounter which has shown during the month of April that some visitors come from the GPWA seal page to visit my site. Some are Aff Mgrs and have then emailed me. I can see this through the "path" function of Statcounter which shows me (a) where they came from, (b) where they went to on my site and then when I check an email against the stats it follows the pattern and the visitors path.

That sounds interesting. Where do I get Statcounter from?

Nandakishore
Online Casino Newsroom

[Ziggy]

Nandakishore:

Statcounter is free so it is definitely worth a look at. You can find it here at
xxhttp://statcounter.com/ (remove the xx)

It comes free with a log size of 100 but you can purchase more for what I consider nominal fees. Others, for that matter, just delete when the free log is full and contine on at no cost. I highly recommend you check out the page cited above - it explains all the details. I am very happy with it.

Have fun,

[universal4]

The problem I have with any counter/stats program that you have to put code on your pages is:

In many cases it's javascript...and what if you don't want javascript on the pages...

Many counter using this method will make a page hang and not fully load if the stats site goes down.

Rick
Universal4

[Ziggy]

Thats interesting. I've never noticed that problem.

[pgaming]

I prefer Aswats and Webalizer keeping these on the server side of things. I tried stats counter for a while wasn’t too bad. I hate bogging down my site with scripts that someone else has written. Simple I think is always better.

Not sure on this one but I received an email from Webceo. Apparently they are claiming their program can track aff links hits? There would be a fair amount of set up involved but will giver a try.

Greek39

[joeyl]

Google analytics for now.

& if I see many more xx's before links to sites that punters are recommending as decent and worth a look, I think I may scream.

Who on earth started such a thing?

[Ziggy]

No clue, Joeyl.

Although, when I joined I understood it to prevent sites from draining/earning PR from this site. Although I could be mistaken because there are others here more knowledgeable.

[CityGuard]

I'm not sure about the origin of Xing out URLs either, but Ziggy's note is part of the reason it still happens (although one would imagine it would only be for sites to avoid rather than recommended sites if that were the only reason).

It is definately appropriate that this came up in the traffic analysis thread...
As a long-time member explained to me, the other reason for Xing out URLs is so that the forum is not identified as the referring page in the logs of the referenced site.

I think in most cases it doesn't matter that the referrer is identified, but there are occassional private forum conversations where it desirable to not clue people into the concerns (such as rogue webmaster discussions when an investigation is ongoing).

I know we don't X out URLs for membership applications and at least one applicant noticed the number of people checking out her site coming from the GPWA page. It was pretty funny to get an PM asking if the spike in traffic was an indicator that the review was near completion!

[Nandakishore]

Nandakishore:

Statcounter is free so it is definitely worth a look at. You can find it here at
xxhttp://statcounter.com/ (remove the xx)

Have fun,

Ziggy, many thanks for your help. I have already visited the site and registered. I will now ask my technical colleague to do the code installation because we use typo3 CMS and I have no idea where to insert the code.

Many thanks again.

Nandakishore
Online Casino Newsroom

[Ziggy]

For sanity's sake (and it is also suggested somewhere by statcounter), for uniformity, I always placed the code right before the ending "body" tag. That way I know for sure where it is located on each page.

Good luck,

[casinoranking]

I also use statcounter

[universal4]

In addition to not wanting to divulge the referrer to sites from within the private threads, we also nbever wanted the stats to show a link back to private threads that could possibly contain the session variable.

This of course would be very difficult for anyone to use to actually get into the thread without authenticationg, but we used this method as an accepted standard for this as well as the above reasons.

Rick
Universal4

[Don]

I use statcounter, and I find it useful, convenient in having all my sites shown together in a list, with the summary of hits per day, month and total. It's also easy to use, but I've had an ongoing problem with some of the stats not showing up for some sites. Still need to work this out.

I also use adfreestats, which is also free, and easy to use. But each new site has to be registered separately, which is inconvenient. The one thing I especially find useful with it is the feature that shows when a visitor clicks on an ad in my site.

I notice a difference in the traffic stats in these counters and the traffic stats shown in my affiliate accounts, which are always higher than the counters. Can anyone shed some light on why this might be happening? Is it because the free counters are not getting all the visits? Would there be more advantage to using a paid counting tool?

[AussieDave]

I notice a difference in the traffic stats in these counters and the traffic stats shown in my affiliate accounts, which are always higher than the counters. Can anyone shed some light on why this might be happening?

Hi Don,
I've used a couple of out of the box click trackers for my aff links, as well as a custom php script too. However, my stat reports always show a difference to what is actually recorded in my affiliate stats at each aff program.

I can only surmise that people who have clicked through my links/banners have been tagged previously and they are not registering in the aff stats at each aff program.

Least that's my take on it...I'd also appreciate any input from others here if I'm barking up the wrong tree.



Cheers



Dave