Whilst this isn't specifically relevent to Adsense it is very beneficial to have detailed statistics of where all your traffic is coming from and where it is going in your site. I was just wondering what programs everyone is using to best analyse their sites to optimise them further?
Yeah I'm currently using a freetracker as well, but I'm at the point where I think it is time that i invest in a proper one so I can get more detailed stats so I can further enhacne my sites... Is anyone out there using a paid for service that they find quite comprehensive. I have applied for Google Analytics but from what I hear the waiting line is 4+ months long... Can anyone give me there view of Google Analytics as well?
really? That sucks, I only installed statcounter a week ago and absolutely love it! Is it definetly against terms and conditions?
I use a few stats tracking tools. Google analytics, stat counter, site meter and awstats. They are a great help in trying to see how your site is doing, but some how I am not sure why they dont telly haha.
oh hang on, do you mean their site violates the TOS, or installing it on your site violates the TOS? Im very confuddled lol.
installing it on your site is most certainly not against the TOS, and will not get you banned/penalized/whatever. a huge, huge portion of websites out there use statcounter. if you're curious who uses it, just do a link:statcounter.com in google or msn.
Do statcounter only give you a free counter if you have less than 250,000 pageviews per month? If that is the case I can't use them... And do they even give you infomation about referrers? There demo version looks pretty basic to me... EDIT: Nvm I see that they have mre features than shown in their demo.
google analytics is definitely more robust, with more features-- mostly, though, they're features I'm guessing the average person won't be using. if you want something as in depth as google analytics, I think you'd be better off with an apache log analyzer. either something on the server like webalizer/awstats or something client-side like weblog expert (which I personally love). I still use statcounter though. mostly just to see overall trends. and yes statcounter claims that if you get a certain amount of traffic you need to pay, but I use it on a site that gets 15 million pageviews a month and they haven't cancelled my service or anything. had it going on there for almost a year.
If you have a big site and you already have a Google Analytics invitation - Use it Statcounter has limits on the free version which will prevent you from having a good look at the stats. The limit is 100 page views. Google Analytics is free and their limit is 5 mil PVs/month. It has quite more options.
I personally would love to be able to use Google Analytics but like I said above I unfortunately don't have an invitation as yet - I applied maybe a week or two ago... So figures crossed. Man I wish I had of looked into it when it first came out... The other thing I wanted to know was - what do people use when for example you want to work out how a subsection of a site - or even a specefic page of your site is doing on a search engine. Normally that page is getting but a faction of the SE hits that the main page or major sections are getting so how do you optimise those pages when it is so hard to get specific data on them?