10 Free, Innovative Web Analytics Tools
When most people think of free web analytics, they immediately think of Google Analytics. But there are many other free, innovative statistic tools available on the web. These tools measure everything from user behavior, to search engine traffic, to real-time visitor tracking, and more. The following ten products may provide valuable data when analyzing your website traffic.
Clicky
Clicky is a clean, all-encompassing analytics package. The service is tailored for small websites and blogs. It's easy to implement and contains advanced features such as real-time visitor tracking and in-depth content analysis.
Enquisite
Enquisite is focused specifically on incoming search engine and PPC traffic. It provides in-depth statistics including page position, landing pages, and specific geographic data.
CrazyEgg
CrazyEgg provides the ability to track, evaluate, and optimize your site based on where your visitors click. Heatmaps and overlays quickly provide perspective into user behavior and habits.
103bees
103bees is a real-time search engine analysis and statistics tool. It is highly focused on natural search engine traffic and the analysis of keywords and terms for SEO purposes.
Measure Map
Measure Map provides free, easy-to-understand web stats for bloggers. Currently the site isn't offering new accounts, but you can enter your e-mail for future notice. Owned by Google and some of its technology was ported to Google Analytics.
whos.amung.us
Whos.amung.us is an attractive, real-time visitor counter. It displays the total number of visitors on your site at any given moment. The easy-to-install widget requires no registration.
FeedBurner
Feedburner, as many already know, is tailored for blogs. In-depth feed statistics and general blog statistics are provided in a slick, intuitive interface. Now owned by Google.
Snoop
Snoop offers real-time visitor tracking. The service streams the page-to-page activity of visitors right to your desktop. Advanced features include audible event triggering and name tag integration.
ClickTale
ClickTale literally records the actions and activity of visitors. The website owner can then analyze the video footage to understand user behavior and increase the usability of the site.
MyBlogLog
MyBlogLog is essentially a social network for blogs. However, the service also provides valuable statistics; including onsite clicking habits and referral information. Owned by Yahoo.
Conclusion
There are many ways to monitor user activity beyond the capabilities of a generic stats package. The niche offerings listed above can provide insight and understanding, to help optimize your traffic and create a more compelling online experience.
Of course there are many other great Web analytics products out there - please list your favorites in the comments.
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Nice post Aidan - but two corrections - clicktale and crazyegg aren't analytics tools - they are testing tools.
Go Clicky (and Sean)! I have been a clicky user for a number of months now and they are a great solution for relatively low traffic sites. Sean has done a great job.
BTW I second Allen on his call about crazyegg and clicktale- these are (strictly speaking)web analytics tools.
Also- if you are going to call crazyegg a webanalytics tool, where is RobotReplay.com on this list?
Oops major typo in my comment what I meant to say was:
BTW I second Allen on his call about crazyegg and clicktale- these are (strictly speaking) NOT web analytics tools.
Thanks for the mention - just to clarify, Clicky is only free for relatively low traffic sites (less than 1,000 daily page views). We operate on the "freemium" model, and offer paid upgrades for users who want additional features or have higher traffic sites.
Hey Allen,
Thanks for the kind words.
Perhaps the term 'data collection' - whether it be quantitative or qualitative - may have been more suitable. In any case, all the tools mentioned above provide an innovative way to gather valuable information about the users visiting and using your website.
Cheers,
Aidan
We at http://notesake.com have been using Clicky since our launch. We love the spy tool and the % counters on the site. We plan on putting a large flat screen monitor on our wall just to have the spy feature displayed. We highly recommend it.
Ian Smith
co-founder of http://NoteSake.com
If you need a few more...I summarized 150 -200 web analytics solutions on my site.
Thanks a bunch for those. I presently just use StatCounter. I have been pleased with them but have been considering trying out a few new things. These will get some attention.
Nice list. I really like CrazyEgg.
Also take a look at Mon.itor.Us free website monitoring and analytic service. It shows 3 type of metrics on a personal Ajax dashboard: external uptime/performance, internal server utilization metrics, and web traffic. Having all that metrics combined in one place opens new analytic opportunities like understanding your website performance dependency from load.
You can check this tool(http://mon.itor.us) also, it provides real-time tracking of visits and pageviews, Top 10 countries, cities, browsers, OS, referrers.
You should try www.stat24.com - real time tracking with pagevievs, visits, cookies, geolocation, clicktrough, and with ClickMap on your site.
The open source web analytics phpMyVisites is simple yet very powerful :) It has a heatmap feature in the last version!! phpMyVisites
Statcounter and Sitemeter are certainly top notch and should be included.
Although they might not be innovative - they offer and unprecedented degree of valuable information for SEO
nice are certainly unprecedented
http://www.lyrics-ru.com
This is not a bad list. But there seems to be a problem with the listings of Crazyegg and clicktale. Also Mashable has done a very comprehensive list. Might want to check it out!
I recommend statcounter.
(It's 24 yr old founder recently won BusinessWeek's young entrepreneur of the year 2007)
I am using MyBlogLog and CrazyEgg along with Google Analytics on my blogs. Please note that free editions of MyBlogLog and CrazyEgg have restricted functionality.
Thanks for guiding me towards Clicky. It looks like an awesome service. I'm trying it out right now.
Thanks for the list! I have been using 103bees for a while now and it is great.
Although FeedBurner is good for burning and distributing feeds, I think StatCounter is far better in terms of ease of use and results. I surprised to see it didn't appear in your ten.
Lovely straight forward moved by telling us all these priceless news and info.
YOU ROCK
from Mahadzira Kuala Lumpur Malaysia
Just wanted to add Lijit to the list. In addition to page views, we offer free stats that show detailed info about the searches being done on your site, the searches that have brought people to you and the searches that have returned no results. These stats are useful if you're interested in getting a better sense of your audience and what they're looking for on your site.
I keep hoping Microsoft will eventually release whatever they've done with the acquired DeepMetrix system. I had some clients who used that tool in the past and (at that time) was extremely impressed with it, particularly with its scalability across multiple sites. Microsoft and Google both snatched up the two most well-rounded players in this market at the time (IMO) in Urchin and Deepmetrix.
I wish Google would follow through on their promise to release another stand-alone software version of Urchin. The old platform is still excellent and great for comparing apples-to-apples historic trends with log files (something tag-based tracking can't do) but it definitely could use some of the advancements Google Analytics has received.
Cool Information!
hi
thanks for the info..
pupil like u should stand up for better innovation for web marketing.
searchspiderz always welcome u:)
Thanks Tara.
I was skimming these comments to make damn sure Lijit was mentioned. Very surprised it isn't mentioned in the actual post though. I think a correction needs to be made.
I'm a big fan of Ice Rocket's Tracker. They also come through really fast whenever I have a problem.
Whoops! Bad markup in previous comment post.
Find ice rocket at http://tracker.icerocket.com
GoStats is an option worthy of mention.
Thanks for the list! I have been using 103bees for a while now and it is great