program to view site statistics?

i keep hearing several different things when it comes to viewing your sites stats. what is the MOST accurate site to use for checking your sites stats?

i use awstats in the cpanel and i click the update now to get the latest and the numbers are wayyyy more than google analytics give me. i use statpress or what ever its called in my wp admin and it gives me another number.

what do i go by?

 

I use google analytics for my sites and they seem to be very accurate in my point of view.
If it is set up right it should transmit the right number.

 

I have used many different stat sites, i personally like statcounter.

 

google analytics shows real (web browser) visits since it requires javascript
awstats shoes all traffic including scripts and bots since it based on server logs

so if you want to see real visits only - use google analytics, if you want to see everything - awstats

 

google analytics try to tell me i get like 200 visitors in a day lol. there is noooo wayyy

 

I use google analytics and have been very happy with it so far.

 

well when i check mine there, the stats are way off and i know i get WAY more... one tweet from my twitter gets me more visitors then what google analytics tell me.

 

I love awstats. I also think piwik is great. It's free and open source and gives you more control than google analytics. It works basically the same way too, so you can use awstats to keep track of all you views (including robots) and piwik to keep track of your (mostly) human visitors.

 

how do i use piwik? where is it at?

 

http://piwik.org

"Piwik is a downloadable, open source (GPL licensed) real time web analytics software program."

You download the zip file and extract the php script on your server's web directory just like any other php script. When you go to the php web page, it will tell you how to set up the mysql database and other configurations.