Free Tool I found today that is much more user friendly that analytics. It reports back all sort of visitor info from IP addresses to browser and o/s used and the cruncher for everyone here the keywords used to get to your site. I have had some very useful advice from these pages I hope this tool can help others.. The system won't let me post the link but putting the usual stuff in front of extremetracking.com should get you there....
Bump...This is one of the best I have seen...unless someone knows different... 2 Days on and it is giving me loads of keyword returns........
you have to use their redirect to get the information correct? This is bad, you should never disclose your traffic information to a non trusted 3rd party tracking system. Unless you like giving out you marketing secrets to other people for free... You need a self hosted solution for major security and performance reasons 1. they could steal your stats for self purposes 2. If their redirect server goes down so does your campaign and your spend is pointless 3. Since they have control over redirect, they could redirect your clicks to their own pages. They just need to sneak in that one every so often for free traffic at your expense.
Thanks for the warning although I am intrigued to know more.. I understand the need for a self hosted solution and in the perfect world this of course would be the first choice. The code they supply is added to landing or home pages on one's owns site so they never see the intimate details from an adwords account. That said I suppose with a little diligence and human intervention they could work out your best performing keywords although they would need to drill down thru the stats to get them. But what use could they make of them? How could they steal clicks if the code is lodged on ones own page? Surely they cannot intercept a click on an ad in search results and re divert it before it arrives at your site? My business and keywords are focused on a service in a tightly focused location. Granted I do have quite a few competitors in this field but the best performing keywords are probably already widely known to those that use adwords (they are not rocket science) and those keywords would only be of any use to someone offering the same service I do in the same town. How do I know this it's because I see their ads both above and below mine at varying times through the day. I am very happy with the roi I get from my campaigns but as always am forever on the lookout on how to improve things. There are certainly security issues around this as I stumbled upon it from a competitors web site and it did allow me to view his detailed stats going back 20 days and general visitor numbers by hour and day 20 Months. They do do a pay for version at $4 a Month I think that 'hides' the code on your page so it cannot be viewed by anyone else. I would also take the view that as you are paying for a service then client confidentiality comes into the equation and it may not be 'legal' for them to sell/trade ot otherwise share sensitive client information. All this said thanks for your comments. I will delve a little deeper and try to address my own security worries now you have rightly pointed them out...
Never give anyone access to your keywords. I wouldn't. That's why I wrote my own self hosted tracking system, I didn't trust the "free trackers" out there. They could very easily log everything you're doing and then by reviewing their logs figure out your ads and then copy your accounts quite easily. That's not worth the risk.