Google Analytics

I've already established I'm a cyber-stalker... just not a creepy one! Google just re-beta'd their Analytics software. I gotta tell you, this is one of the coolest things I have ever seen. If you find this boring, just go ahead and vote for me to be KING OF THE GEEKS!

I've been doing websites for almost twelve years now, and I've used all sorts of tracking/reporting software. I've used Sitemeter, WebCounter, WebTrends, HttpPhaser, Feedburner, and another dozen that aren't even around anymore. I don't know what it is about Google, but they do things that other people do, they just do it better. A lot better.

Google Analytics works off of your GMAIL account (another way Google will take over the world). -- If you need a GMAIL invite, let me know. -- Analytics is similar to most other services. It tracks visits, page views, location, time, where'd they come from, where'd they go to. Fun stuff like that. But what Google realizes is the more data you have, the better data you have.

Their reporting feature is, well, Googlesque (is that a word?) The interface is simple, yet the amount of data it stores rivals any PAID service I've ever used. Oh, and this one is free.

Create all your reports the way you want it, and stick it on the dashboard (homepage) so it's right there when you log in. Don't want to look at the web page daily? It will e-mail you the data, in the format you want, at the time you want. Export the data to PDF, Excel, CSV...

I've got two negatives (Google, listen up):

1) The data posts every 24 hours. Come on, Google. If someone is on my site at 9:51pm I want to know about it on 9:52. Don't make me wait till the next morning!

2) It doesn't cover RSS Feeds. Of my website, RSS Readers (Google Feeds, Bloglines, etc) are roughly 2/3rds of my traffic. Google, support your blogs!

All things considered, Google does what it does better than anyone else. Keep it up!

Comments

[Jen Smith]

I too love the new Google analytics. And you are so right about not tracking RSS feeds. Very annoying! Especially since they offer Google Reader to let you use feeds rather than checking every site (not complaing about Reader though, I lurve it).

The tracking suite provided by my hosting company (westhost.com), AWStats 6.5, attempts to track feeds. It separates the Robot/Spider counts (which includes feeds) so I get some numbers (for May so far: Feedfetcher-Google has hit my site 477 times).

You may want to check into AWStats.