Free Web Site Analytics

Earlier this year, I posted about tracking visitors that come to your web site and with this post, I wanted to give some examples of a couple of free tools that you can use on your site to do just that.

First, the one that we use mostly: Google Analytics. If you are interested in knowing who visits your web site, where they came from, what pages of your site they visited and how long they stayed on each page AND you want to see it all with pretty looking Flash graphics, then Google Analytics is for you. Did I mention that it is free? Signup for an account, get your personalized tracking code, paste it into each page of your web site you want to track and you will be checking web stats in no time flat.

Last, another popular one: Webalizer. This is one that is often offered for free from your web host. Typically, when you signup for web hosting, Webalizer will be included in your hosting package. The interface is simple and clean but it doesn’t track as much data as Google Analytics. But with Webalizer, you don’t have to signup for anything special and you don’t have to manually install any tracking code into the pages of your web site. So it is a good option for ones who are not comfortable working with web site code.

These are only two. One is what I would call “high-end” and the other is perhaps “economy class”. They both will get you where you want to go and they both are free, but Google Analytics is more classy whereas Webalizer is simply functional and not real big on frills.

Whatever you choose, a web site analytics program is the best way to check the performance of your web site.