19
Feb
7 alternatives to Google Analytics
We all use Google Analytics to track visitors to our WordPress sites. Right? Not necessarily. There were several services before Analytics was the standard, and even more have popped up in recent years that compete with the big G! Here are some of the best options out there, with a little analysis of our own.
But first, some critique of Google Analytics which has caused some webmasters to look elsewhere.
- Delay. Have you ever found yourself checking your stats at 12:01 AM?
- Reliability. Analytics isn’t supposed to count bots and spiders, but have you ever found a massive spike in traffic with no real explanation? Or perhaps you’ve wondered how a search term of “green chili recipes” brought someone to your blog about rugby?
- Ease of use. There are some very powerful features built into Analytics, but for 90% of webmasters, they’re overboard. Sometimes I just want a simple, stylish graph of traffic.
Here are several alternatives to Analytics that address some of these issues.
- Real Time
- Easily compare and manage multiple sites
- Tons of trackable information
- Promises additional features soon
- Real time statistics
- Free and paid plans
- Most of the popular features of Analytics
- A graphically pleasing layout
- Offers a WordPress Plugin to integrate with your site.
- Has an impressive client list including Mashable, SmashingMagazine and BuySellAds.com
- Real Time
- Simple
- Open Source
- Plugin powered so you can add/remove features
- Installed on your server so you have complete control and ownership of the data
- One of the originals
- Free and paid plans
- Easy and fast to set up
- Easily share your stats (or secure them from) visitors
- Real time
- Simple interface
- Traffic alerts
- $9.95/month at press time
- Real time
- Event tracking
- “Heat map” technology
- Desktop integration
- Self-hosted for full control
- Search support
- Feed subscription patterns
- $30 per domain – One off
Do you know of another alternative to Google Analytics? Share it below with your comment.
Tags: analytics, Tools, Traffic
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Dusty
Dusty Anderson is an avid WordPress user and the editor of Pingable.org.
Read more about me here.
Comments (44)
Cyrus, Mint isn’t $30.00 per month. It’s $30.00 per domain, one-time purchase. I know, because I have two domains using it.
Hey RT, cheers for the info, I will update the post. Great to see you still read our blog.
Well, I have used only GA and GetClicky(Clicky) but surely I will check out the others too. Lets see if they are any competition to GA
Hey RT. Thanks for the clarification!
I don’t use more time GA precisely for the reasons you mentioned.
Currently i am comfortable with realcounter, it’s free and very easy to use.
I’ve been looking for an alternative/addition to GA for awhile now and woopra looke really promising. I’m also trying out the free version of site meter. If it delivers on it’s promises I will likely move to the susbscription based service. Have you had any direct experience with woopra?
Hi, I don’t have direct experience with Woopra, but it does look like a strong candidate based on the features claimed. I am going to selectively test each service further. Thanks for your comment!
I think Google Analytics for free is the best one. Another most important thing about G “We are now habitual of it”. The only problem with Google is the delay of 24 hours other wise it’s the best one, at least for me. I am tracking four of my domain with Analytics for years without any problem.
Cyrus, good post … I’ve been thinking about alternatives recently. I do like GA, I actually recently found a good resource for GA … http://www.google.com/support/conversionuniversity/ pretty much everything someone needs to fully learn GA.
We all usually use Google Analytics to track visitors to our WordPress sites.I’ve been looking for this so long. That God that I found you. Thank you for the tips that you’ve shared to us. More power to your site! God bless
Personally, I use Sitemeter for my blog. Lately, I have also tried out Histats. Both are adequate for me. I don’t really have a need for in-depth stats because I just don’t think I should waste too much time over-analyzing the traffic to my sites.
I’m currently using Google Analytics for your my blog site and I’m happy with it but I think I will try those. Who knows maybe I will like them more than Google Analytics. Thanks for this post it gives us choices what traffic counter to use.
Thanks for the article! I will try Woopra. Till now I have only used Analytics and AwStats. The results they display are very different. It is interesting to see what a third tracking program will say.
I am using GA, but have not tried the alternatives.
You mentioned you are using Clicky. How good is it?
Great article, by the way we use W3roi, it’s a PPC conversion tracker for affiliates and can also be used in ecommerce. It’s faily new but works great for tracking PPC and all your online advertising!
Sitemeter has been awhile and I used it even before Analytics was launched. In my experience, it is quite reliable and fast, too. I switched to Analytics because it seems that everybody uses it and I use other Google products such as Adwords and AdSense. Without those, I’d stick to Sitemeter.
I did not know I had more options than GA thanks and I will take some of these advices on board
Cyrus,
I’ve used Google Analytics for almost a year now for the sites I run, and I’ve liked it so far. I do see what you’re saying though as far as the delay, and also in the reliability. I might give one or two of the free sites you have listed a try. I’m always open to trying new Blog/SEO type stuff. Everyone has their own mix of what they use that works for them!
I’m comfortable with realcounter, it’s free and I think it’s easy to use.
I think Google Analytics for free is the best one. The only problem with Google is the delay of 24 hours other wise I think it’s the best one…at least for me.
I’ve been looking for an alternative/addition to GA for awhile now and woopra looke really promising. I’m also trying out the free version of site meter. If it delivers on it’s promises I will likely move to the susbscription based service. Have you had any direct experience with woopra?
Thanks for the post…Must say that I used most of them but the most optional one is GA.
Thanks Cyrus, Interesting post,I use GA but it seems it doesnt work to me
Google Analytics to track visitors to our WordPress sites. And it is a search engine that’s why many people love to visit Google site.Google Analytics which has caused some webmasters to fnd something else which is unique.Thanks for your informative article more power to your site! G-d bless
Thanks for sharing this list. I didn’t know about majority of them, and surely will give a try to some. Beside, GA i am using server implemented Awstats. Anyway, i have heard good critics about extremetracking.com also.
I am currently comfortable with GA, but after reading this post I feel it is time to experiment and try new analytics available. The discussion here seems to convey that the other methods prove to be more beneficial.
“Sometimes I just want a simple, stylish graph of traffic.”
haha… I’m completely agree with this statement. I have used google analytics for 2 or 3 years. To be honest I’m not completely understand the features. Simply said, google analytics is not user friendly (at least for me).
I’m very glad that you list the alternatives to Google Analytics. This page is already bookmarked. Thanks.
thanks for the post on alternative traffic counters to google analytics!
I have been looking too for an alternative to google analytics, I’ll take a look at the Clicky WP plugin.
The only other alternative I’ve used to GA is W3Counter, which I was quite happy with. Although GA does offer quite a lot for free, I will agree with you that sometimes it’s too much. Half the features of GA I will admit I don’t actually use.
- Alan
It is difficult to pry yourself away from anything google offers – no other company understands web traffic better or has a bigger budget to serve the web community. It may be worth considering other analytics options for a new site; but sacrificing all of your current data for an existing site along with the additional risk of one of these alternative services closing up shop is just not worth the consideration. Google just has a critical mass that is hard to escape.
SiteMeter ain’t bad all. Used it for a while together with Google Analytics until when I noticed that they were giving me almost the same results. I decide to settle for Analytics since it had more features and a better organization of data
Wordpress Stats plug-in ain’t too shabby. Check it out.
Actually, analytics is pretty good, wanna know the secret? when you use a tool that doesn’t have a huge database of ips that are bots or spiders then this tool will show you wrong stats. Google is a major player in search engines, and they collect data all the time, they compare it and do their research, so this company knows what ips are bots and which not due to extensive research. Other companies can’t do that because they don’t have access to so much of the traffic that google gets.
I wasn’t aware that there were these alternatives to Google Analytics, so I appreciate the list.
A couple of things that Google Analytics does not have that I wish it had are:
1. realtime state. C’mon Google, this is the 21st century.
2. I would like to be able to see the link that a visitor uses to exit my site from, if indeed that visitor clicked out using one of my links. This would be very helpful for me. If that functionality is in Google Analytics, then I am overlooking it somehow.
Another service that I’ve used in the past that is not listed here is statcounter.com. They had both free and paid versions when I used them. I haven’t used their service in awhile, so I don’t know how good they are now, however.
It took some time for me too to realize that GA isn’t the only tracker around. I have been experimenting lately with Histat which is not bad. Guess I’ll try another one from your list, Piwik looks interesting.
i usually use Piwik and GA this is great combination for my sites))
Thanks for posting these. I’ve heard that Google Analytics isn’t completely reliable. How reliable and currently updated are these ones?
I use statcounter.com free version and it very good.
Cheers for the great info. Im still thinking on what to use and this site will surely help me.thanks to ya all.
I had friend who was telling me that she had a whole bunch of sites penalized at once because of one site – they were all on the same adsense/analytics account and got hit with a penalty even though there was just a single site at fault.
Kind of makes you a bit paranoid about trusting Google with all your sites stats and other stuff.
You’ve got to wonder how all of these were impacted by Google’s recent decision to encrypt all data when someone is logged into a google account.
The whole “not provided” thing really, really sucks.
For now I am sticking with free stat sites. One thing about GA is how strict they are with what they count as a visitor. This can be a good thing, if you want to face the hard truth. I also look at AWStats in my cPanel. VERY different numbers, but good info on keywords.
Woopra all the way for me! Surpasses GA on the real time part.