Awstats is very bad in my experience, it often sees crawlers as visitors... Google Analytics is very good...but I have a better solution, clicky
If you need analytics features, but you don't want to use Google, you can use Piwik as an alternative.
For detailed statistics i think awstats is better, also webalizer (some people may run on older systems or may block certain features and don't appear on google analytics). For a fancy easy and user friendly view google analytics is a good tool.
I generally prefer AwStats as I find them to be more accurate, and I think it provides enough information for me to use productivly with my websites. But that proxy thing jumpenjuhosaphat, thank you for informing us, that is very interesting. Google's analyser seems to look better, but I would rather have something that just does the job.
The main differences between AWstats log file analysis and Google Analytics 1. The data is inevitably different, caused by the different tracking methods used. Because AWstats tracks website stats from the web server, it picks up server calls from search engine crawlers and that in itself makes a huge difference in your stats (depending on the size and popularity of your site). In this day and age, crawl statistics are of very limited value – this should not be a reason not to go for Google Analytics as to most, 9/10 times this info is insignificant 2. AWstats is meant for network administrators and engineers, whilst Google Analytics is made for business owners, marketers and analysts – business focused. A lot of the stats that AWstats provides are purely meant to inform about website functionality and finding out more about the technologies used by the site’s visitors. Google Analytics is a platform that allows you to discover the why’s (or usually why not’s) and how’s of the interaction of website visitors with your site.
Google analytics is good for seeing the traffic and making report points of view and awstats is good for seeing the traffic as well as bots.
I prefer google analytics than awstats, google analytics is a free service where as aw stats is a paid service
I like google analytics but I generally use AW stats just because I don't want to give google access to so much information about my site. Mostly sites which have a high bounce rate due to there being not much reason for a visitor to check out any other pages than the initial one they found.
I feel Histats is better than both. but it dont its not recommended for big sites as it can provide stats upto some number.