What the best blog statistics plug in?

[thadroe]

I've tried several of the wordpress blog stat plug-ins and they either flat out don't work, or are just buggy.

Any recommendations on the best one to use? I just dropped a wordpress blog into a website I'm running and I'd like to track number of visitors, which pages they're visiting, which links they're clicking on, etc.

Thad

[Phil Newton]

I use StatTraq for basic stats. It's nothing particularly complex, but it lets me see which posts are popular and where people are coming from. Personally I think server stats are the best way to get a decent picture of how things are being done, but for a quick look I use StatTraq.

I've also used CrazyEgg for more detailed statistics, and it was a real eye-opener. Being able to visualise where your readers are clicking is a great help, especially when doing design work.

[thadroe]

Originally Posted by Phil Newton

I use StatTraq for basic stats. It's nothing particularly complex, but it lets me see which posts are popular and where people are coming from. Personally I think server stats are the best way to get a decent picture of how things are being done, but for a quick look I use StatTraq.

I've also used CrazyEgg for more detailed statistics, and it was a real eye-opener. Being able to visualise where your readers are clicking is a great help, especially when doing design work.

Wonderful! Thanks Phil. And yeah, crazyegg looks great and would be incredibly useful to me!

Thad

[Caveman Joe]

AWStats has always been my server log file analyser of choice.

[Adam Sargant]

If you have access to the raw logfiles, 123Analyzer is pretty damned exhaustive and flexible

[tobyhede]

I use Google Analytics. It's awesome.

[thadroe]

Thanks everyone....very helpful!

[Tabs]

I just got a new wordpress site, it is so difficult to find plugins to do anything. I especially needed the stats plugin I have tested statcounter.com and google analytic.

Here is what I found:
Statcounter I like because it excludes all my page views, (I am always working on something) however I don't see it reading my individual blog pages, you know levnow/blog/blogtitle... it just notes visits to levnow.com/blog (everything lumped into one) I also don't have that much traffic to the new blog yet, so I am still on the fence with statcounter.

Google analytics however has done a great job showing me each blog page individually. I can tell exactly what pages people are clicking on. I even did goal tracking on my blog and I can find out how many blog visits a day I get. I wish I could find a plugin for stats like the one on the other wordpress site (wordpress.com) but this is the best I have seen so far.


Awstats hates my computer or the operating system I am using it crashes my computer everytime I try to use it.

Good luck with wordpress, I have to say setting up my blog took every ounce of positive thinking, will power and hope I had and I am still not done. The help and forum are useless, if you find anything (plugins) good or useful please share with me.

Cheers

[Stu]

I just installed AWstats actually. Luckily my host had a nice howto in their wiki or I would have been completely lost. Im happy with it so far though.

[birger]

I have used Webalizer, AWstat, Statcounter and Google Analytics.

Statcounter's feature where you can "cookie" yourself to exclude hits by yourself is nice. They are also one of the few "free counters" that don't require you to put their graphics on their site.

Webalizer and AWstat works in a different way than Statcounter and G.A., in that it analyzes Apache's log files. This means it can count all hits, also those that don't support javascript (ie. robots/spiders), but mostly you'll be interested in how many real readers you have. Using javascript and cookies also provides a much more reliable way of counting returning visitors.

If you can choose between Webalizer and AWstat I'd prefer AWstats, it looks better and has more features.

However, the king of web statistics is definitely Google Analytics (formerly Urchin). It has a ton of features, tailored for different roles ("webmaster", "marketing" et.c.), supports plenty of languages and different graphs. It recently also increased allowed sites from 10 to 50!

[dcldnl]

I'm using php-stats, it works very well in my opinion

[Henry]

I use Sitemeter.

[TheBull]

I too use Google Analytics. I currently track four sites with it and it is nice to quickly browse through them. As previously mentioned, I can view individual posts as well which is always helpful.

[Jon]

Originally Posted by tobyhede

I use Google Analytics. It's awesome.

I second that. GA is the best.

[drgrudge]

I must admit that I’m a stats freak. Perhaps I’m guilty of wasting time watching traffic rather than getting busy. I track my site’s traffic with Google Analytics, BAStats, AwStats, 103 bees Search Term Analytics and Stat Counter. Note that all of these do the same job, but present the stats in different angles, which I love. Still I keep looking for other source to track my site’s traffic.


I think no single tool can be the best, it really depends on which things you want to keep track of...

[Tabs]

drgrudge, you have a good point and technique, one should have several stats counting software, you can have a case when one fails you have backup. Also I like that the different stats software out there do different things.

I already use three and I am about to add awstats this week.

Cheers