Five times more data in free StatCounter
The logfile for the free StatCounter trackers has been increased 5 times. You can now track detailed data for the last 500 visitors to your website. This means a better overview of browser and system data, referrer information, search engines and keywords.
If you are an existing free member of the StatCounter service, then you have to manually update your projects to get the increased logfile. You do this by logging into StatCounter and clicking the wrench icon beside your project. Click ‘Adjust Log Size’, and enter 500 in the box. Click ‘Adjust Project Log’ and you're done.
This improvement may have an impact on the ranking in our test. There is a chance StatCounter may again claim the first place, but it is a very close competition at the top of the list. We'll keep you posted.
GoStats offers more options than any other tracker
Since early this year the free GoStats tracker has been re-newed and now offers countless reporting options, more than any other free visitor tracking service. There is also a paid version of GoStats, the differences between the paid and free version are minimal. The free GoStats misses the option to set your own reporting periods, does not show a world map, and detailed reports are on last 100 visitors only. For most of us the free version is good enough to do the daily analysis of the website visits, the paid version makes sense if you earn a few bucks with your site and you can use it to increase your earnings.
GoStats provide in-depth tracking information, such as entry and exit page statistics, depth and duration of visits. And also visitor path information, but to me it is unclear what is supposed to be reported here as it is completely different information (it seems) as what other trackers are showing for visitor path statistics. Well, maybe I should ask in the forum, as the support forum seems very active, definitely a big help in case someone gets stuck with something related to GoStats.
Lowest scoring item in the test of GoStats is the presentation of the data on the stats pages. The graphics are hard to read (although you can switch easily between line and bar charts, but it does not really help getting it better to read), and there is no clear overview. A customized dashboard would be a definite bonus, as it takes now too much time to go through the reports, since there are so many and the load time varies.
We did not mention the WordPress plugin, the countless options to choose from for customizing your icon, the option for weekly email overviews, the customization of the public stats. Well I guess you get the picture: GoStats is one of the best free trackers, and we can recommend it for your site.
Quiet here
It has been (very) quiet here, lately. There is no major news on this site perhaps, but the counter reviews are being kept up to date. So you can continue to compare hosted counters and trackers in our counter overview. And select the appropriate visitor tracker based on your requirements in our query tool.
Google Analytics
If someone is able to write a book with 336 pages about it, how am I going to tell something useful about Google Analytics is less than 336 words? Well, I can't. And you may understand that this web analysis package also requires a bit more effort before you are able to maximize it's use. I think that if you are running a standard website or weblog, that you should spend most of your time on writing articles, and not on trying to understand Google Analytics reports. On the other hand, if you are making some money with your website, then GA allows you to verify the changes you make to your website or campaigns and will help to increase your income.
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Google Analytics is uniquely positioned in that a webstats packet with such capabilities can be used for free. This software is normally pretty expensive. However, usage may be free, but there is no true support, you have to rely on your own knowledge to interpret the data and reports. This is an area where the competition can position their paid packages with support and consultancy.
It is difficult to compare GA with the other free trackers in this test. The reports are organized differently, focusing on the role that the reviewer has in the organization. If you are a chef you may have different needs than the webmaster, and the grouping of reports reflects this. Sometimes it is difficult to find a specific report, or information is spread across several reports. As an example: you can find referrer information in GA, but you have to look into two different reports to get all the details. The GA reports are very nice and clear, with clean graphics and tables that allow to easily switch from overviews to more detailed data.
If you really want to use GA to its full potential, then you have to define conversion targets. This is the page that is shown after the visitor completes a desired transaction, for instance the confirmation page after placing an order. This requires you to think about this, and also your willingness to adopt your website to make these sort of measurements possible. Add to that, that you should be willing to make regular changes to your site, to allow you to measure the effect of these changes with the help of GA, and you understand that just reviewing a couple of reports is not going to do it. Google Analytics allows you to track advertising campaigns, this also requires extra work, but if you are making money with your site it could well be worth the investment of your time. Google Analytics will assist you with data to maximize profit, if this is what you want.
Without doubt, Google Analytics is the most powerful tool that we have ever reviewed here on tellertest.com. It offers way more than the other free trackers and counters. The only shortcoming is complexity, and that is almost inherent to the power this package has to offer. But, as you can understand from what I write above, it is not necessarily the best tool for everyone. If you have a weblog or fairly standard site, then other counters may suit you better. But if you are making money out of your site, specifically if you are selling products or services online, then Google Analytics will help you to take the right decisions to increase your profits.
I will stick to my OneStat Free and Statcounter.com counters for now.
ActiveMeter
I am not sure about the inside, the technical setup, but from the outside ActiveMeter is looking like it is cloned from Statcounter. Both trackers call your counters 'projects', both have similar limitation in 'log size' (last 150 visiters in ActiveMeter, last 100 in Statcounter), and the two share the common setup of a dashboard with high level data from all your counters on one page. And also page navigation through the reports is similar. But there is more to say about ActiveMeter.
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It is possible to tag your visitors with a name; instead of the IP address you will then see the name appearing in your reports. This makes it easy to track returning visitors. You have to find the name behind the IP address first, of course, maybe you combine information from comments that readers place on your weblog, or you may know the IP address of close relatives and friends. Since ActiveMeter can report on click paths, identifying your visitors by name pushes you near the boundary of what you can do from a privacy perspective.
ActiveMeter have a support forum, but it looks more like a place to dump your spam. No recent information found there.
It is not a bad visitor stats package, this ActiveMeter, but it looks very similar to
Statcounter, and it has a lower score in the tracker test.
W3Counter
We have another tracker that conquers a spot in the top ranks of the Free Tracker Test. W3Counter proves that it is not only possible by flooding the user with reports, but by concentrating on quality reports and a couple of nice features. To start with these features: W3Counter provides RSS feed tracking and has a built-in link tracker. Continue reading if you want to know how this works.
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W3Counter obtains RSS data from
Feedburner. To make use of this feature, you have to create a feedburner account and register your feed there. Otherwise you will not be able to use this option. But the advantage is of course that you have all your reader stats together.
If you want to know on which links your visitors have been clicking, then W3Counter offers a nice feature. Via the "site overlay" menu, you can see, on a copy of your webpage, which links were clicked on and how many times. A separate link tracker is no longer needed, and it works like a charm.
There is also information on the bounce rate in the detailed pages reports. This tells you how many of your visitors did not continue beyond the first page of your website. In other words, these visitors were not interested in the remainder of your site. If your bounce rate is high, it may be a good idea to investigate how you can improve on this, how you can convince your readers to check the other information on your site.
We have found some small opportunities for W3Counter to improve. It looks like the service has lost some interest of its owners. The browser list for instance, needs regular updates since new versions of Firefox need to be added, Firefox 2.0 is not properly recognized. Another indication of the lack of attention is the W3Counter's own weblog: there is no news on this blog since a long time, and, more importantly, the comments are filled with spam.
Note that W3Counter requires a small icon on your website, and that the link associated with this picture will not open in a new window. This way you run the risk of loosing visitors who forget to return to your site.
W3Counter is one of the best trackers in this test. We can certainly recommend it, and... it's free, so what are you waiting for...?
Performancing Metrics
Since we have tested so many counters and trackers already, is there anything new to discover? Well, this time the answer is affirmative, because Performance Metrics is certainly different from the rest. This visitor statistics services is primarily targeted towards bloggers using one of the supported weblog tools: Wordpress, Drupal, Typepad, Blogger or Movable Type. But Performance Metrics can be used with other websites as well.
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On an initial glance at the options that Performance Metrics is offering, one may say that there are limitations. We are missing items as total number of visitors since inception, no "top day" reporting, no hourly and weekly overviews, and no visitor IP or host name information. But that is more than compensated with additional reports on Adsense clicks and outbound links tracking, and separate statistics for postings and comments.
We like the style of the stats pages. These are very web 2.0, both in appearance (lots of white space, the actual information gets all the attention) and in the use of sliders to zoom in on the data. The graphs and tables are clear, and it is easy to select different reporting time periods. You can even compare two days to each other, but I do not know how useful this is.
It is possible to publish your stats. This is not clearly explained how to do it, so I give a shot at it here. First you have to enable this feature in step 2 when editing the settings for your blog counter. There you can choose to publish RSS and public stats. As soon as you have done this, and you visit your dashboard (the first page in your metric section), you will see a button for your RSS 2.0 feed. Check the link of the button, this is obviously the link to the feed; in the feed you will find the link to your public stats, something like the link to the
public stats for our test account. By the way, by adding the RSS feed to your feedreader you have an ideal way to check your stats on a daily basis.
Performance is targeting professional bloggers, people who make money by publishing articles on their weblog. They offer two other products beside the Metrics service, namely an Ad network and a weblog editor for Firefox. Support is available by means of a forum. The Performance Metrics service is still under beta (this is so web 2.0!), but it works without a flaw, and I can certainly recommend this tracker. Especially if you run one of the supported weblog tools, you should definitely give it a try.
Speed of Stats Sheet now acceptable
When we did the initial review of Stats Sheet for the Tracker Test, it was obvious that it was failing on one point specifically: speed. But you can improve what is not working, and that is exactly what the people at Stats Sheet did: both the speed of the tracker code and of the stats pages has improved considerably, in some cases more than 10 times improvement in load times.
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Another improvement is the way the reporting time period is now fixed so it allows you to easily review all the statistics for the selected period instead of having to re-enter the selected time period over and over again. This makes it much more easier to analyze your site's visitor data.
The extra bonus of Stats Sheet is that it can track the Adsense blocks on your site. We now had the opportunity to test this, and: it works! It even gives you more information than you can find on your Google Adsense account pages, since Stats Sheet registers the description of the outgoing link, so you can better determine which ads your visitors have clicked on.
Big improvements lead to a higher score for Stats Sheet in the tracker test.
See for yourself.
StatCounter tracks visitors with Google Maps
We already knew of a service called gVisit.com that allows you to track your visitors on a Google Map. But a separate service is not needed if you use StatCounter for your web tracking needs, since StatCounter now also offers Google Maps integration, easily accessible from your statistics pages using the menu option Recent Visitor Map.
This allows you to get a quick overview of the geographic spread of your visitors. And by clicking on a marker, individual visitor information, such as their webbrowser or referrer, can be checked. It is a nice extension on the already powerful StatCounter, and maybe just the extra reason to give this free website tracker a try.
stimulusResponse
A strange name for a counter, but stimulusResponse are indeed offering a free website tracking service. Not the very best, when compared in our test, but also not really bad. Especially the good referrer information and data on search engines and search keywords is what made us smile. The icon for this tracker, a light grey circle, is that difficult to notice that it can be considered almost an invisible service. Maybe you should just give it a try, you can get one on the stimulusResponse website.
May I have your votes, please
If you want to, you can now rate articles on tellertest.com. This is all beta testing of a pivot-port of an existing WP plugin, votio, that has some nifty AJAX data handling and a nice intuitive user interface. Hope you like it, I certainly do.
For now you can vote limitless, there is no cookie handling during the testing phase so you can vote as often as you want for the same article. Not sure that I will keep the votes around after testing is done, though, likely I will reset the whole thing at some time.
For the Pivot bloggers out there who want this on their weblog: I will be wrapping this one up soon and will announce it in the Pivot forum when ready.
