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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 is essentially a social network for blogs. However, the service also provides valuable statistics; including onsite clicking habits and referral information. Owned by Yahoo.
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.
Posted by: Allen Stern | August 27, 2007 6:14 PMGo 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?
Posted by: half-geek | August 27, 2007 6:31 PMOops 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.
Posted by: half-geek | August 27, 2007 6:34 PMThanks 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.
Posted by: Sean | August 27, 2007 6:41 PMHey 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,
Posted by: Aidan Henry | August 27, 2007 7:19 PMAidan
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
Posted by: NoteSake | August 27, 2007 7:50 PMco-founder of http://NoteSake.com
If you need a few more...I summarized 150 -200 web analytics solutions on my site.
Posted by: Webanalyticsbook | August 27, 2007 8:37 PM
Posted by: Bruce from The Bookshop Blog | August 27, 2007 8:48 PMThanks 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.
Posted by: HighFivez.com | August 27, 2007 9:17 PMAlso 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.
Posted by: Hovhannes Avoyan | August 27, 2007 9:38 PMYou 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.
Posted by: Mikayel | August 27, 2007 10:47 PMYou should try www.stat24.com - real time tracking with pagevievs, visits, cookies, geolocation, clicktrough, and with ClickMap on your site.
Posted by: rafal | August 28, 2007 12:26 AMThe open source web analytics phpMyVisites is simple yet very powerful :) It has a heatmap feature in the last version!! phpMyVisites
Posted by: Pascal | August 28, 2007 1:50 AMStatcounter 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
Posted by: SearchEngines WEB | August 28, 2007 3:00 AMnice are certainly unprecedented
Posted by: ru | August 28, 2007 3:36 AMhttp://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!
Posted by: Steven Finch | August 28, 2007 4:59 AMI recommend statcounter.
Posted by: Dillon Thomas | August 28, 2007 5:20 AM(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.
Posted by: Kashif | August 28, 2007 5:59 AMThanks for guiding me towards Clicky. It looks like an awesome service. I'm trying it out right now.
Posted by: naser | August 28, 2007 6:02 AMThanks for the list! I have been using 103bees for a while now and it is great.
Posted by: John Webber | August 28, 2007 7:07 AMAlthough 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.
Posted by: Girish Kulkarni | August 28, 2007 7:09 AMLovely straight forward moved by telling us all these priceless news and info.
Posted by: Mahadzir | August 28, 2007 7:09 AMYOU 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.
Posted by: Tara Anderson | August 28, 2007 9:39 AMI 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.
Posted by: RustyS | August 28, 2007 9:40 AMCool Information!
Posted by: Home owner insurance company | August 28, 2007 11:31 PMhi
Posted by: searchspiderz | August 28, 2007 11:44 PMthanks for the info..
pupil like u should stand up for better innovation for web marketing.
searchspiderz always welcome u:)
Thanks Tara.
Posted by: Derek Anderson | August 29, 2007 7:20 AMI 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.
Posted by: Chris O'Sullivan | August 30, 2007 3:37 AMWhoops! Bad markup in previous comment post.
Find ice rocket at http://tracker.icerocket.com
Posted by: Chris O'Sullivan | August 30, 2007 3:39 AMGoStats is an option worthy of mention.
Posted by: Richard from GoStats | September 5, 2007 3:29 AMThanks for the list! I have been using 103bees for a while now and it is great
Posted by: Fatih Nakış | December 18, 2007 8:56 PM