Can anyone point me to a good Web site statistics tool? I've used the various free options out there, but they're not terribly impressive. Here's what I need it to do:
1. It should be able to filter out referrer spam from a hostname list that I specify.
2. It should do a reasonably solid job at Web analytics -- e.g., it should be able to tell a robot from a recurring user.
3. It should be free.
Any thoughts?
Have you tried Analog? It requires a bit of initial setup, but once that's done, the results are impressive. And the price is right.
http://www.analog.cx
It'd be helpful to know what you've already tried. I'm rather fond of Google Analytics and Performancing Metrics.
A free, remotely hosted service is StatCounter.com. I use it myself... you'll have to look at the features to decide if it's a sufficient replacement for something local/internal. As for local, I'm satisfied with Webalizer for my limited needs and it ships with both flavors of Redhat.
Filtering out the referer spam from your log files is a task you can script yourself, so you needn't count that as a requirement in the analysis package.
I like the pretty pictures from awstats.
Funky, I've not looked at Google Analytics. I'll check it out -- thanks for the advice.
I've looked at Awstats and Analog. They both take a lot more time to tweak than I'm willing to invest. Also, they're clunky on a Windows box. I know, I should be running it on my personal Linux server, but I use that for testing and frankly, I have many other things in my life to which I need to devote myself.
Whoops -- Google Analytics is closed to new users for now!
ClickTracks just released a free learning edition called ClickTracks Appetizer. The download is at http://www.clicktracks.com/products/appetizer