What is the best way to track your blog's traffic?

[Agota]

Hey,

I'm wondering what you guys consider to be the best way to track your website's traffic?

I'm confused because hostgator traffic tracking and google analytics show completely different things. I've also heard that there are some paid options for that that are cool (forgot the names, lol ). What do you guys think?

[Curtis2011]

Google Analytics is pretty legit. They give you tons of information. Also one reason why Analytics stats may be different than web host stats, is that (I've heard) that Analytics doesn't count search engine bots and other bots that come to your website as visitors. Whereas some other tracking methods do count those, so their numbers are skewed by bot visits.

[EternalOne]

Originally Posted by Curtis2011

Google Analytics is pretty legit. They give you tons of information. Also one reason why Analytics stats may be different than web host stats, is that (I've heard) that Analytics doesn't count search engine bots and other bots that come to your website as visitors. Whereas some other tracking methods do count those, so their numbers are skewed by bot visits.

I agree with Curtis. Your hostgator stats will be bloated with webbot data.

I also installed the wibya toobar at the bottom of my site - Wake Up World and this allows me to watch traffic in real time.

My stats within my Wordpress dashboard are pretty good as well.

[Dimitri]

I love using StatCounter. It has a nice design to it, is easy to navigate and browse through the stats, is written simply and easy to understand. It is also always up-to-date when you refresh it, which is nice if you want to check up on your traffic throughout the day.

Google Analytics is nice, but I find it is only updated every few hours, which is a turn-off for me. It might be more productive to check up on your stats only once a day, but it bothers me that I never know if it's the most up-to-date version of my statistics.

But yeah, Analytics is probably the most accurate as far as blocking bots and search engines goes.

[bluegreenguitar]

i like getclicky they provide info the same day and have a good interface
Web Analytics in Real Time | Clicky

[ragtag]

Piwik is a good alternative to Google Analytics. It's an open-source project, and you run it on your own web server (or whereever your page is hosted). It has a live view of the traffic, and pretty much the same features as Google Analytics, except you're not handing your data over to Google and it updates faster. It also has a plug-in for wordpress, so you can see some basic statistics there.

[poika]

i think google analytics does a great job. i tried using statcounter a few years ago for one of my sites, but then after switching to google analytics i never wanted to go back or anywhere else.

[James81]

statpressCN is one of the best traffic counters I've found for wordpress.

[Agota]

Thank you very much, guys!

[tommytommy]

Social Networking sites are the best places where you could submit your articles and get an instant boost of traffic to your blog.

[jonymony]

If you want to make traffic towards your blog then do social bookmarking of your blog and also put new and frees content in your blog. Do link wheel on your different blogs.

[Gazzali]

Originally Posted by Agota

Hey,

I'm wondering what you guys consider to be the best way to track your website's traffic?

I'm confused because hostgator traffic tracking and google analytics show completely different things. I've also heard that there are some paid options for that that are cool (forgot the names, lol ). What do you guys think?

I use google analytics and i think this is quite accurate. However, recently my traffic drops drastically and i do not know why