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<?xml-stylesheet type="text/xsl" href="http://forums.techsoup.org/cs/utility/FeedStylesheets/rss.xsl" media="screen"?><rss version="2.0" xmlns:dc="http://purl.org/dc/elements/1.1/" xmlns:slash="http://purl.org/rss/1.0/modules/slash/" xmlns:wfw="http://wellformedweb.org/CommentAPI/"><channel><title>Web Building</title><link>http://forums.techsoup.org/cs/forums/24.aspx</link><description>Strategies and expert advice on all aspects of developing and maintaining an effective Web presence. Topics covered include site-building tools, web design, SEO, analytics and traffic-boosting methods, usability, hosting, and functionality.&lt;br /&gt;Hosted by &lt;a href="http://forums.techsoup.org/cs/members/Yann/default.aspx"&gt;Yann Toledano&lt;/a&gt; of &lt;a href="http://www.ytconsulting.com"&gt;YTConsulting.com&lt;/a&gt;.</description><dc:language>en</dc:language><generator>CommunityServer 2008 SP1 (Debug Build: 30619.63)</generator><item><title>Re: RE: Web analytics tools</title><link>http://forums.techsoup.org/cs/forums/thread/102963.aspx</link><pubDate>Thu, 08 Oct 2009 21:52:59 GMT</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">caa7681b-025a-49ce-809f-7435bfe4d232:102963</guid><dc:creator>mikehansen99</dc:creator><slash:comments>0</slash:comments><comments>http://forums.techsoup.org/cs/forums/thread/102963.aspx</comments><wfw:commentRss>http://forums.techsoup.org/cs/forums/commentrss.aspx?SectionID=24&amp;PostID=102963</wfw:commentRss><description>&lt;p&gt;You may try this one, also some nice features and it may be an alternative to Google Analytics an some othesr:&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;a href="http://www.debilsoft.de"&gt;http://www.debilsoft.de&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div style="clear:both;"&gt;&lt;/div&gt;</description></item><item><title>Re: RE: Web analytics tools</title><link>http://forums.techsoup.org/cs/forums/thread/98643.aspx</link><pubDate>Fri, 01 May 2009 19:18:59 GMT</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">caa7681b-025a-49ce-809f-7435bfe4d232:98643</guid><dc:creator>lesliefriedrich</dc:creator><slash:comments>0</slash:comments><comments>http://forums.techsoup.org/cs/forums/thread/98643.aspx</comments><wfw:commentRss>http://forums.techsoup.org/cs/forums/commentrss.aspx?SectionID=24&amp;PostID=98643</wfw:commentRss><description>&lt;p&gt;Comparing stats from Google Analytics and Urchin requires you to ask some questions.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Google Analytics is actually based on the &amp;quot;page-tagging&amp;quot; or UTM method of tracking which is one method of visitor identification available with Urchin Software.Google acquired Urchin in 2005 and rebranded the Urchin On Demand SAAS as Google Analytics in November of 2005, and made it free to AdWords users.&amp;nbsp; Urchin can also analyze visits by IP + User Agent, which is a log analyzer method of visitor identification.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;You may be comparing stats from Urchin 5 or Urchin 6 to Google Analytics reports.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Urchin provides a suite of IT reports which can be very valuable to hosting companies or any company that bills for bandwidth used. The Urchin reports do not automatically filter out visits&amp;nbsp;Robots and Spiders--there are separate IT Reports for those visits. Google Analytics automatically filters out robots and spiders--unless there are new ones.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;Now that Microsoft no longer supports Livestats, Urchin is the logical replacement. As an Urchin (from Google) and Google Analytics Authorized Consultant (since 2003 for Urchin and since Urchin was acquired by Google in 2005 for Google Analytics) , Friedrich Software can give you some training--onsite or desktop--about how to read these reports and what stats are most meaningful. Avinash&amp;#39;s book and blog are great,&amp;nbsp; He does not talk much about Urchin, because he is the Google Analytics evangelist and came on board after the acquisition.&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div style="clear:both;"&gt;&lt;/div&gt;</description></item><item><title>Re: Web analytics tools</title><link>http://forums.techsoup.org/cs/forums/thread/95749.aspx</link><pubDate>Sun, 01 Feb 2009 09:09:55 GMT</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">caa7681b-025a-49ce-809f-7435bfe4d232:95749</guid><dc:creator>wre2wre</dc:creator><slash:comments>0</slash:comments><comments>http://forums.techsoup.org/cs/forums/thread/95749.aspx</comments><wfw:commentRss>http://forums.techsoup.org/cs/forums/commentrss.aspx?SectionID=24&amp;PostID=95749</wfw:commentRss><description>&lt;p&gt;&lt;strong&gt;I choose Live Web stats at http://www.webseomasters.com &lt;/strong&gt;&amp;nbsp;that provides the traffic of&amp;nbsp;my site, a&lt;b&gt; variety of statistics and analytics&lt;/b&gt; helped&amp;nbsp;me toanalyse my web&amp;nbsp;traffic. &lt;b&gt;Web Stats&lt;/b&gt; provides a wide range of choices on what to display on your Webpage or blog. &lt;br /&gt;
&amp;bull; Countries Visitors &lt;br /&gt;
&amp;bull; Your Basic statistics &lt;br /&gt;
&amp;bull; Online visitos &lt;br /&gt;
&amp;bull; All the Above or any combination of the above (Horizontal or Vertical ) &lt;br /&gt;
&amp;bull; A Small image icon &lt;br /&gt;
&amp;bull; A Configurable hit counter (Select the font style, color , size, background color) &lt;br /&gt;
You can change the display on your page any time you wish, fast and easy. &lt;br /&gt;
Why do webmasters and bloggers have to track their visitors? Tracking the visitors is an essential part of any online business. Learn how many visitors you are getting and have the statistics tracking capability. &lt;br /&gt;
Using the advanced graphs on there cpanel my web traffic incresed.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;At the same time i provide a live online visitors information that make my site more exiting and live.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;It is a free service found at&amp;nbsp;&amp;nbsp; :&lt;strong&gt;http://www.webseomasters.com&lt;/strong&gt;&lt;strong&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/strong&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;&amp;nbsp;&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div style="clear:both;"&gt;&lt;/div&gt;</description></item><item><title>Re: Web analytics tools</title><link>http://forums.techsoup.org/cs/forums/thread/95252.aspx</link><pubDate>Thu, 15 Jan 2009 19:52:20 GMT</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">caa7681b-025a-49ce-809f-7435bfe4d232:95252</guid><dc:creator>visiblenet</dc:creator><slash:comments>0</slash:comments><comments>http://forums.techsoup.org/cs/forums/thread/95252.aspx</comments><wfw:commentRss>http://forums.techsoup.org/cs/forums/commentrss.aspx?SectionID=24&amp;PostID=95252</wfw:commentRss><description>&lt;p&gt;We enjoy using the new Yahoo Web Analytics and Google Analytics. Together they provide all the data and statistics one could want. In addition, we use a combination of some in-house tools we developed, which are now offered on our company site for free. Though perhaps readers interested in Web Analytics might be interested in trying out our tools. We encourage feedback so be sure to let us know if you think improvements can be made.&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;http://www.visible.net/tools/analyzer/&lt;/p&gt;
&lt;p&gt;http://www.visible.net/tools/statistics/&lt;/p&gt;&lt;div style="clear:both;"&gt;&lt;/div&gt;</description></item><item><title>RE: Web analytics tools</title><link>http://forums.techsoup.org/cs/forums/thread/84835.aspx</link><pubDate>Fri, 30 Nov 2007 14:37:00 GMT</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">caa7681b-025a-49ce-809f-7435bfe4d232:84835</guid><dc:creator>tsfbeth</dc:creator><slash:comments>0</slash:comments><comments>http://forums.techsoup.org/cs/forums/thread/84835.aspx</comments><wfw:commentRss>http://forums.techsoup.org/cs/forums/commentrss.aspx?SectionID=24&amp;PostID=84835</wfw:commentRss><description>&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Here is one of his pieces on the topic&lt;a href="http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/2007/08/web-analytics-vendor-tools-comparison-and-one-challenge.htmlprint/" target="_blank" title="http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/2007/08/web-analytics-vendor-tools-comparison-and-one-challenge.htmlprint/"&gt;here&lt;/a&gt;</description></item><item><title>RE: Web analytics tools</title><link>http://forums.techsoup.org/cs/forums/thread/84833.aspx</link><pubDate>Fri, 30 Nov 2007 14:29:00 GMT</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">caa7681b-025a-49ce-809f-7435bfe4d232:84833</guid><dc:creator>tsfbeth</dc:creator><slash:comments>0</slash:comments><comments>http://forums.techsoup.org/cs/forums/thread/84833.aspx</comments><wfw:commentRss>http://forums.techsoup.org/cs/forums/commentrss.aspx?SectionID=24&amp;PostID=84833</wfw:commentRss><description>Megan:&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The best information on that issue is in Avanish Kaushik&amp;#39;s book (chapter 2) - Web Analytics An Hour A Day.  It gives you a blow by blow comparison of how the different stat packages dervive their stats - e.g. some use cookies, some use tags, etc.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
The best practice is understand it, but don&amp;#39;t get hung up comparing the two sets of stats.  The best practice is collect information from a variety of sources -you can just rely on web analytics for decision-making or you will be mislead - and look at trends over time.  &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;</description></item><item><title>RE: Web analytics tools</title><link>http://forums.techsoup.org/cs/forums/thread/84803.aspx</link><pubDate>Thu, 29 Nov 2007 15:14:00 GMT</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">caa7681b-025a-49ce-809f-7435bfe4d232:84803</guid><dc:creator>megkwas</dc:creator><slash:comments>0</slash:comments><comments>http://forums.techsoup.org/cs/forums/thread/84803.aspx</comments><wfw:commentRss>http://forums.techsoup.org/cs/forums/commentrss.aspx?SectionID=24&amp;PostID=84803</wfw:commentRss><description>We just switched to Google Analytics from Urchin. &lt;br /&gt;
We&amp;#39;re finding that the discrepancy between the way the two read stats is huge. &lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Does anyone know of current research into contextualizing web stats packages?</description></item><item><title>RE: Web analytics tools</title><link>http://forums.techsoup.org/cs/forums/thread/80662.aspx</link><pubDate>Thu, 12 Jul 2007 23:51:00 GMT</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">caa7681b-025a-49ce-809f-7435bfe4d232:80662</guid><dc:creator>MeganKeane</dc:creator><slash:comments>0</slash:comments><comments>http://forums.techsoup.org/cs/forums/thread/80662.aspx</comments><wfw:commentRss>http://forums.techsoup.org/cs/forums/commentrss.aspx?SectionID=24&amp;PostID=80662</wfw:commentRss><description>I saw &lt;a href="http://www.theregister.com/2007/07/10/nielsen_page_views/" target="_blank" title="http://www.theregister.com/2007/07/10/nielsen_page_views/"&gt;this interesting recent article&lt;/a&gt; on the subject of web analytics. The way the popularity of a website is determined is changing--i.e. time on a site versus page views. The article also brought up an interesting point that with the use of tabbed browsing, it&amp;#39;s harder to accurately gauge the amount of time a user spends on a website. Just becuase a user keeps a website open in a browser tab for a long time, doesn&amp;#39;t necessarily mean they are spending time on the site.</description></item><item><title>RE: Web analytics tools</title><link>http://forums.techsoup.org/cs/forums/thread/80623.aspx</link><pubDate>Thu, 12 Jul 2007 02:21:00 GMT</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">caa7681b-025a-49ce-809f-7435bfe4d232:80623</guid><dc:creator>tsfbeth</dc:creator><slash:comments>0</slash:comments><comments>http://forums.techsoup.org/cs/forums/thread/80623.aspx</comments><wfw:commentRss>http://forums.techsoup.org/cs/forums/commentrss.aspx?SectionID=24&amp;PostID=80623</wfw:commentRss><description>I just got another cool book on web analytics .. called "Actionable Web Analytics" by Jason Burby and Shane Acthison.  The subtitle says it all "Using Data To Make Smart Business Decisions" -- well worth a read.</description></item><item><title>RE: Web analytics tools</title><link>http://forums.techsoup.org/cs/forums/thread/80277.aspx</link><pubDate>Wed, 27 Jun 2007 19:12:00 GMT</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">caa7681b-025a-49ce-809f-7435bfe4d232:80277</guid><dc:creator>matthewart</dc:creator><slash:comments>0</slash:comments><comments>http://forums.techsoup.org/cs/forums/thread/80277.aspx</comments><wfw:commentRss>http://forums.techsoup.org/cs/forums/commentrss.aspx?SectionID=24&amp;PostID=80277</wfw:commentRss><description>Beth is 100% correct in her "not getting caught up in numbers" notion.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
When I&amp;#39;m looking at traffic, I am more interested where spikes occur and why?  What content has drawn the most interest?  Where do folks enter into my site repeatedly and where have they come from.  Do they STAY, and if so, where do they hang out?&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
I am far more interested in quality visitors than quantity visitors.</description></item><item><title>RE: Web analytics tools</title><link>http://forums.techsoup.org/cs/forums/thread/80238.aspx</link><pubDate>Tue, 26 Jun 2007 18:15:00 GMT</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">caa7681b-025a-49ce-809f-7435bfe4d232:80238</guid><dc:creator>tsfbeth</dc:creator><slash:comments>0</slash:comments><comments>http://forums.techsoup.org/cs/forums/thread/80238.aspx</comments><wfw:commentRss>http://forums.techsoup.org/cs/forums/commentrss.aspx?SectionID=24&amp;PostID=80238</wfw:commentRss><description>&lt;a href="http://beth.typepad.com/beths_blog/2007/06/new-screencast-.html" target="_blank" title="http://beth.typepad.com/beths_blog/2007/06/new-screencast-.html"&gt;screencast&lt;/a&gt;&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
I finally posted my screencast and there is a companion wiki with resources.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
http://analytics.wikispaces.com/</description></item><item><title>RE: Web analytics tools</title><link>http://forums.techsoup.org/cs/forums/thread/79535.aspx</link><pubDate>Sat, 26 May 2007 00:34:00 GMT</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">caa7681b-025a-49ce-809f-7435bfe4d232:79535</guid><dc:creator>Malinse</dc:creator><slash:comments>0</slash:comments><comments>http://forums.techsoup.org/cs/forums/thread/79535.aspx</comments><wfw:commentRss>http://forums.techsoup.org/cs/forums/commentrss.aspx?SectionID=24&amp;PostID=79535</wfw:commentRss><description>Here at TechSoup we use Clicktracks and it analyzes the web logs.  I would say that it is a medium-end solution.  It is highly adaptable in the sense that it will count a combination of different pages.  It also does path analysis.  The drawback is that it is rather slow and hogs the machine that I use it on.    There have also been some problems with getting it to work at all some times.</description></item><item><title>RE: Web analytics tools</title><link>http://forums.techsoup.org/cs/forums/thread/79525.aspx</link><pubDate>Fri, 25 May 2007 18:49:00 GMT</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">caa7681b-025a-49ce-809f-7435bfe4d232:79525</guid><dc:creator>tclaremont</dc:creator><slash:comments>0</slash:comments><comments>http://forums.techsoup.org/cs/forums/thread/79525.aspx</comments><wfw:commentRss>http://forums.techsoup.org/cs/forums/commentrss.aspx?SectionID=24&amp;PostID=79525</wfw:commentRss><description>I think I am observing an error within the Google Analytics as well.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
By default, the dashboard shows a date range of the past week. Within that week it shows hits on the "map" from Sydney, Melbourne, and Athens.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
If I expand the date range to run from April 13th (my first date with Google Anayltics) through today&amp;#39;s date, those hits from Sydney, Melbourne, and Athens do not appear on the "map". They disappear.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
I have not yet discovered why this may be happening, but it does raise a question about the reliability of the statistics, or at least requires a tutorial on how to read them correctly. At face value, something appears to be amiss.&lt;br /&gt;
&lt;br /&gt;
Anyone else observe this phenomenon?</description></item><item><title>RE: Web analytics tools</title><link>http://forums.techsoup.org/cs/forums/thread/79512.aspx</link><pubDate>Fri, 25 May 2007 12:45:00 GMT</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">caa7681b-025a-49ce-809f-7435bfe4d232:79512</guid><dc:creator>danromanchik</dc:creator><slash:comments>0</slash:comments><comments>http://forums.techsoup.org/cs/forums/thread/79512.aspx</comments><wfw:commentRss>http://forums.techsoup.org/cs/forums/commentrss.aspx?SectionID=24&amp;PostID=79512</wfw:commentRss><description>I agree that it&amp;#39;s not a good thing to get caught up with the numbers to such an extent that you&amp;#39;re not analyzing and using the statistics.  On the other hand, if the numbers aren&amp;#39;t good to begin with,  then you don&amp;#39;t have a good base to act from. Faulty statistics won&amp;#39;t help you make good decisions.</description></item><item><title>RE: Web analytics tools</title><link>http://forums.techsoup.org/cs/forums/thread/79439.aspx</link><pubDate>Wed, 23 May 2007 13:33:00 GMT</pubDate><guid isPermaLink="false">caa7681b-025a-49ce-809f-7435bfe4d232:79439</guid><dc:creator>ChiefApricot</dc:creator><slash:comments>0</slash:comments><comments>http://forums.techsoup.org/cs/forums/thread/79439.aspx</comments><wfw:commentRss>http://forums.techsoup.org/cs/forums/commentrss.aspx?SectionID=24&amp;PostID=79439</wfw:commentRss><description>I totally agree with Beth. Most organizations will be served well by focusing on just a handful of metrics, selecting one decent tool - and then sticking with monthly reviews and ACTIONS. Otherwise who cares about all those figures if nobody does nothing about it anyway!</description></item></channel></rss>