Best analytics software?

Uber993

Joined
Sep 23, 2014
Messages
9
Likes
2
Degree
0
I don't want to use the google one anymore because... I just don't think it's a good idea or necessarily the best one. But I don't know what else is out there. Clicky? Piwik? AWS Stats?

Newbie here but I would love some feedback on other ways to track my traffic without hanging over all of the data to the big G. I know they're gonna get most of it already either from people's browsers, or simply by being the people that send me most of that traffic, but still...
 
Piwik is good stuff. I use it on a few sites and it's pretty solid. Good move on wanting to move away from Google. While it is true that a lot of info can still be gleaned by Google, at least you're thinking about ways to give them less info; Info that can (and will) be used against you. Also with Piwik or any other tracking system you install, you own the data and there's a lot that can be said for that in itself.
 
SmokeTree said:
While it is true that a lot of info can still be gleaned by Google, at least you're thinking about ways to give them less info; Info that can (and will) be used against you.
Click to expand...

I think the opposite sometimes. It really depends on how much you have to hide. If you have a very clean white hat effort that's kicking major ass, you might WANT to submit to analytics and webmaster tools so Google can have a better understanding of just how bad ass your site really is. Shove it down their throats and get those "user interaction" boosts. Like you said though, they can already glean a lot of it, like CTR's on the serp pages for instance. But time-on-site, actions-per-user, etc. They don't know all of that if you dont' tell them. If you suspect you're slaying it better than others higher than you in the serps and you don't have anything to hide, you might benefit from submitting.
 
Daquan said:
I think the opposite sometimes. It really depends on how much you have to hide. If you have a very clean white hat effort that's kicking major ass, you might WANT to submit to analytics and webmaster tools so Google can have a better understanding of just how bad ass your site really is. Shove it down their throats and get those "user interaction" boosts. Like you said though, they can already glean a lot of it, like CTR's on the serp pages for instance. But time-on-site, actions-per-user, etc. They don't know all of that if you dont' tell them. If you suspect you're slaying it better than others higher than you in the serps and you don't have anything to hide, you might benefit from submitting.
Click to expand...

See I would reckon that they DO know stuff like time on site, bounce rate, etc.. at least for people who are using Chrome...
 
And here I am using chrome and webmaster tools and analytics... I think my site is as whitehat as you can be while still building links, so I'm not too worried... but this thread will definitely make me a bit paranoid...
 
CheapJordans said:
And here I am using chrome and webmaster tools and analytics... I think my site is as whitehat as you can be while still building links, so I'm not too worried... but this thread will definitely make me a bit paranoid...
Click to expand...

I personally don't like to get suckered into all the paranoia I had a large site a while ago using GA webmaster tools doing all my research on chrome. The site was a success even with a few "illegitimate" tactics (although nothing too major). Then again times may have changed since then. Aslong as you are not blaitently doing anything word. Your safe.
 
^ You have to set off several red flags before you set off the algorithm police. They don't have time to comb through everything. Several wires have to be tripped before attention gets called.
 
Future State is bang on. The amount of processing power it would take for them to constantly check your everyone's sites via GA and WMT all that shit, it's just not worth it or cost efficient. BUT that's not to say they wont if you hit the right flags, as Future State stated.

Keeping it legit don't worry, if your doing it a bit dodgy then you may have an issue.
 
Clicky is worth checking out, too. I think I pay 80 bucks a year... it's kind of simplistic, there might be better free alternatives, but it works and it's easy to set up and that's good enough for me.
 
Another +1 for clicky but I'm sure they're all pretty good these days.

A downside to Google analytics... I don't know if they have fixed this or not, but you used to be able to search the source code for someone's analytics ID then use a service like sameID.net and it would tell you all of their other sites using the same analytics account.

AFAIK, Clicky gives you a unique ID for each site so people aren't able to piece things together so easily.

This also applies to amazon aff codes, adsense codes, etc... If you have adsense on two sites, just assume everyone will be able to connect them, and certainly Google of course.
 
Another thumbs up for clicky. I believe they have a trial where you can track one website for free? Get a couple proxies until you can afford the full 80 subscription. Yay problem solved!
 
I'm with clicky, pretty decent interface and not like it's cool to have your enemy right in your source code :wink:
 
I struggled to get to grips with Piwik. Although I still have it installed on some sites. If anyone knows any top notch tutorials please direct me.

I use Clicky on some sites also, not as much data as GA and Piwik but still decent for the basic stats you want to know.
 
Piwik is nice enough, but it used to have(? my info might be dated) problems with really big sites (as in traffic, not number of pages). So you'd need some linuxy guru type to write you a round robin for the logs.

::emp::
 
ALLURBASE said:
A downside to Google analytics... I don't know if they have fixed this or not, but you used to be able to search the source code for someone's analytics ID then use a service like sameID.net and it would tell you all of their other sites using the same analytics account.
Click to expand...

This is still the case. All ID's use the following form: UA-12345678-X. The first number remains the same while the X (or X's if you have more than 10 sites on the same account) is a number that depends on when you added the site to your account. So that makes it really easy to track down all sites on someone's account. This could be pretty bad if you pissed someone off.
 
I use Piwik on all my sites, with one trick that allows me to hide ID.
On the whitest "official" sites I use GA, on separate G accounts. I want to use WMT and to show G the site is legit, right?
 
nice i am going to check out Piwik i still using the big g one for most off my sites as i dont have anythink to hide in them and i think from my testing i get better rankings if i have my sites in webmaster tools and GA

but of course i dont add this to my pbn sites or if i do i dont use my main google acount

i use an vpn and an different google account but make sure the vpn is all ways set to the same country lol
 
Piwik is my choice, they have simple and easy to use API for multiple project tracking.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back