Every webmaster wants to know how many hits his website is getting, whether it be daily, monthly or just sporadically; but with so many stat tools availble, which one is the best to use? In this article, we’ll review some of the top systems available.

1. Google Analytics

In my opinion, Google Analytics is the best free stat tool out there. Google Analytics is a very comprehensive stat tool which can tell alot about the traffic of your website. It provides in depth information, and can be valuable to the success of your website.

Main Features of Google Analytics:

• Detailed graphs of your statistics
• Geographical information on where your visitors originate from
• Detailed statisitcs in general e.g. Site Usage, Bounce Rates.
• Overviews on traffic e.g. Content overview and Traffic overview
• Goals, which is a feature that measures how well your site fulfills business objectives.

Advantages

• Detailed statistical information
• Accurate statistics, along with high quality graphs
• The ability to review any date period to check out stats recorded on that date

Disadvantages

• For someone who’s relatively new to being a webmaster, Google Analytics’ sheer amount of information it gives may be slightly overwhelming to a new user.

2. WordPress Stats (Plugin)

If you’re a blogger, there’s a good change that you use WordPress! If you are running WordPress, you might want to consider using WordPress Stats.

Main Features of WordPress Stats:

• Integrates right into your WordPress installation
• Provides information on referrals, clicks, key search terms and more
• Integrates into your WordPress Admin Dashboard, so you can always keep track of your stats
• Any information recorded is instant as it happens. So if someone clicked on a page on your website, WordPress Stats would update almost instantly.

Advantages

• Minimal Setup required (Because it’s a plugin, all script lines that need to be added for it to work are inputted automatically)
• Specifically designed for WordPress websites, so it’s a stats system you can trust if your using WordPress
• Produces a graph which updates as hits are recorded. This is displayed on both the blog stats page and WordPress admin dashboard.

Disadvantages

• It’s only for WordPress
• Not as in depth as others, but does its job well.

3. Woopra

Woopra is a bit like Google Analytics, because they both provide similar statistic information to their users. It is slightly unique as it is split into two services: a desktop client program and a web server application. You are also able to track single users and where they go on your website in seconds. Features like this are valuable to your website success and show how good your content is.

Main Features of Woopra:

• Live Stat Monitoring
• Provides two different services: desktop client program and a web server application
• Provides in-depth analytical information as well as general stats.
• Innovative stats system
• The new Woopra Analytics

Advantages

• You are able to see your stats on your desktop thanks to the Desktop Application
• Stats are live and update instantly.
• The Woopra API
• Because of the API, there are a handful of plugins to integrate Woopra with blogs and other website services.

Disadvantages

• Woopra is currently BETA (So there are bugs that are yet to be found or are being fixed)
• Requires a bit of time to fully setup.
• When Woopra is out of Beta, free and paid plans will be in place, so this may hint that some systems are going to be limited to free users.

4. Alexa Web Information

Alexa, is a bit of a different stat system, it’s what you could call a public stat system. Why public? Because every website in its crawl list is viewable by anyone, which means anyone can look at another websites statistics. Not only are they public but they also have there own traffic rank system to list websites in there crawl list. In some peoples views someone would consider Alexa as not worth mentioning, but I believe it provides some useful information.

Main Features of Alexa:

• Public Stat monitoring system
• Provides information like, demographics, keywords, related links, and click stream information
• Uses own Alexa Traffic rank system to list websites according to those most popular

Advantages

• Once a website is crawled, Alexa will update the information automatically.
• Don’t need to sign up for an account to view any websites statistics
• Data is updated quite regularly

Disadvantages

• It’s not the most accurate system to use
• Isn’t as in depth as others stat systems
• Alexa is not a live stat service. Usually stats are updated daily or every two or so days.
• Because Alexa has its own traffic rank system it may not represent a websites true position in the web.

5. Compete

Compete provides analytical information but also allows anyone to view websites that it has collected information on, similarly to Alexa. Compete has a diverse sample of websites and works with samples of internet users and analyzes the web pages they visit.

Main Features of Compete:

• Combination of Analytics and general stats
• Like Alexa it is also a public stat system (Anyone can view website stats which have been collected)
• Branches out into different self service tools.
• Compete is based on samples of people’s internet activity

Advantages

• Valuable to a business/corporate website
• Different ranges of analytical information
• A variety of Self Service tools

Disadvantages

• It is generally not for the average user. More for the business/marketing sector
• Compete isn’t free. Only basic information is available for free users. Again this is due to Compete being aimed at businesses and not general websites.