Google Analytics is way cool.

[KLB]

At Chris' suggestion I added Google Analytics code to two of my sites and while I don't think it will replace my processing of server logs, I am extremely impressed with the marketing information that can be dug up with it.

If you are already using Google AdSense on your site, or are an AdWords advertiser, I'd strongly recommend giving Google Analytics a try. You can't even imagine how much information it will put at your finger tips about your traffic.

There are a few things I don't like, but they are minor. Some things I'd like to see changed are:
1) give conversion rates by actual conversions, not just a percentage.

2) allow more than 500 different geographic points to be placed on Geo map overlays (maybe allow the top 5,000 geographic points at once).

3) improve the zooming characteristics of the geo map overlay such that one can zoom into a geographic area without the markers and text also zooming.

4) fix web page overlays to work properly with pages that are rewritten (e.g. "/index.html" being redirected to "/").

[AndyH]

For my site, where milliseconds matter, it slowed the page load time down too much.

[Chris]

If you setup goals I believe you can get actual conversions.

[KLB]

I set goals for my log home site and you do get conversions, but they are percentage based and do not directly show the actual number of conversions. Since I care about lead generation I care about actual number of conversions, not percentages.

For my environmental Chemistry website I do not have specific webpages that could be considered a goal so setting up goals for that site makes no sense. My "goal" is to simply turn page views and visitors into advertising revenue.

[Westech]

On the geo map overlay, you can page through to see all points by using the previous and next links above the map. It's not ideal, but does let you see all of the data.

I fully agree that they need to improve the geo map overlay. I'd love to see them integrate it with the google maps interface.

[KLB]

Oh now interfacing with Google Maps would be way cool.

One really interesting thing I learned is that in three days people used almost 19,000 different search terms to find my site and that no search term garnered more that 1.5% of the searches used to find my site. I was also able to get a feel for the kinds of search phrases people used and the types of things people used to find my site. For instance I now know I need to spend a lot more time adding more chemical formulas to my chemical database as this is a common way people find my site.

[Westech]

It really helps drive home the meaning of the "long tail of search," doesn't it?

[KLB]

It really helps drive home the meaning of the "long tail of search," doesn't it?

I think of it like using a really net to strip the ocean floor.:p

[rpanella]

I set goals for my log home site and you do get conversions, but they are percentage based and do not directly show the actual number of conversions. Since I care about lead generation I care about actual number of conversions, not percentages.

The reason percentages are useful is you can cross reference with most other things, such as refering source, and it will give you the conversion rate of each source of traffic you have. This can be very useful and show you where you should be spending most of your marketing efforts. Absolute conversions would not be as useful here since they can't be directly compared.
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Anal mature (http://www.****tube.com/categories/92/mature/videos/1)

[KLB]

Actually I'd like to have both a column for absolute conversions and a column for conversion percentage.

[MaxS]

I absolutely love Analytics. II have been using it for quite awhile and it's great.

[KLB]

It really helps drive home the meaning of the "long tail of search," doesn't it?

Just a follow up on the long tail of search comment. Now that I have a weeks worth of GA data I can report that in the past week Google is reporting that people found my site using almost 39,000 search phrases.:eek:

People always get so caught up on searching for that magic big money phrase when the reality is that this isn't how people do searches. Focusing too much on those magic phrases can totally overlook scores of "long tail" searches that people actually do.

This also proves that when it comes to SEO, content still really is king because a really deep site with lots of content has a much better chance of catching long tail searches than a shallow site that tries to get to #1 for a handful of "golden" (more like fools gold) search phrases.

[ses5909]

I've been using analytics for a few months now too and have really enjoyed it. Yes, you can get most of this info off your server logs but I think analytics is a fine addition and the way the present the info is awesome. I set it up for all of my clients to and while some of them are overwhelmed by all the available info, they learn to like it.

[Selkirk]

I like the "referring sources" report and the "data over time" cross reference.

[FPU]

OK, is there a free version and a paid version of GA guys ?

Please explain for future readers!

[KLB]

Thus far I have only found a free version of it. I think it is free so that Google can use GA to collect mountains of data.

[MaxS]

As far as I know, it's free -- You should also know that they cap it for non-Google Adwords advertisers. I don't remember what they cap it at, but I'd say it's fairly generous. Either way, I'm an advertiser.

[Westech]

They say they cap it at 5 million pageviews per month for non-adwords advertisers, unlimited for adwords advertisers. We have an active adwords account but we hardly ever use it. We just spend a few bucks every few months to make sure it stays active. We track our sites with Analytics and blow the cap away every month and have never run into any problems.

[KLB]

Man I wish I had a problem with running up against the 5 million cap. :p

[FPU]

What server side stat's scripts are good that show the referral link and search query with the search engine URL link back do you guys know of ??

I used a PERL based one in the past that gave me this data!

Any good PHP based server side scripts you guys know of that can be used on forums?

[KLB]

To process my server logs I use the Perl based Awstats.

[Westech]

FPU, AXS (http://www.xav.com/scripts/axs/) is a good perl-based script that will do what you want.

pphlogger (http://pphlogger.phpee.com/) is a good php script that will do what you want, but I've found it gets a little slow and resource intensive on higher traffic sites. For low-medium traffic sites it works great.

[FPU]

Yes, that is the one we were using until we switched hosts then all the data was lost Westech.

Thanks for the reminder, there are a lot of great packages out there for sure, but as I mention keywords and link back to the search is the most important to me.

GA does not provide this by what I remember of it's interface.

[Westech]

pphlogger does show search keywords and the full URL (including query parameters) of each visitor's referrer.

[rpanella]

Analytics does show search queries, but it doesn't report the full url of referrers as far as I can tell. Sometimes I will see a domain show up in my referring sources report, and to find out which page is actually linking to me, I have to search in my server logs for that domain.

This is really the only complaint I have with Analytics.
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Alaska Dispensaries (http://alaska.dispensaries.org/)

[Blue Cat Buxton]

I used to use pphlogger, and it has some great stats, but would reitterate Westechs comment that it can be resource hungry - with Analytics Google takes care of all of that.

[KLB]

AwStats is also resource hungry when processing big logs. Before starting it I always start my task manager so that once I start AWStats I can lower the process priority of the two Perl instances that AwStats spawns. If I don't do this I can't use my computer as AwStats will take up all my processing power for a couple of hours.

[FPU]

There has to be a better way guys, none of this sounds comprehensive enough, not GA or the other programs!

I guess the only way we can get everything is to buy something like WebSideStory (http://www.websidestory.com), but that costs big money!

http://www.websidestory.com/products/web-analytics/hbx-analytics/overview.html?lid=//Products//HBX+Analytics

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ~

[MaxS]

AwStats is also resource hungry when processing big logs. Before starting it I always start my task manager so that once I start AWStats I can lower the process priority of the two Perl instances that AwStats spawns. If I don't do this I can't use my computer as AwStats will take up all my processing power for a couple of hours.
I disabled AwStats on my server - the logs were far too large for it to process without bottlenecking the server.

[FPU]

How do you do that if you need to, just delete the files or program?

[KLB]

I have Perl installed on my laptop, so running AwStats isn't a big deal. All it does is affect me and I can simply change its processor priority using Windows Task Manager once I have started generating reports. But ya, processing a month's worth of 8 - 12 meg log files takes a monster amount of processing power (where is a Cray when you need one?).

[rpanella]

How do you do that if you need to, just delete the files or program?

I had to do this as well. Some control panels might let you disable it, but what I did was go into the daily cron directory and changed the permissions of the awstats script to be non-executable.
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Anal Mature (http://www.****tube.com/categories/92/mature/videos/1)