15 Free Web Analytics Tools For Your Site

I first discovered web analytics when I read a post on Slashdot about some stats collected via WebSideStory. A short time later I was working for WebSideStory where my love for web analytics bloomed.

I am asked all the time, What free web analytics tools do you use or recommend? The obvious answer is Google Analytics because of the many advanced features it offers.

You may not want to use Google Analytics because of several reasons including fear of how Google may use that data or wanting a server side solution instead of a JavaScript tag solution. Here are 15 additional free tools for analyzing your site:

Woopra : Real-time web analytics tool that uses client desktop software to get the stats instead of a web interface. This is probably better for those with a super fast internet connection coupled with awesome computer hardware. Although it works just fine on my 4 year old Toshiba Satellite laptop. Woopra is a JavaScript tag based solution.

Logdy: Another real-time web site analytics tool with a web interface & login. Lodgy is also a JavaScript tag based solution.

WordPress Stats:  If you have a wordpress blog then you should definitely try out WordPress Stats. It is web analytics for writers/bloggers. I believe it uses calls to your wordpress database to build the stats making it a server side PHP based solution; no JavaScript tag required.

ClickTale: ClickTale records a visitors session on your site for you to play back later. Great for more visual analysis of page layout, intent and figuring out where people get lost or confused. ClickTale requires a JavaScript tag at the top and bottom of your page so performance is a concern for high traffic sites. I recommend only using ClickTale for a small percentage of visitors; you may even install only on key pages you want to optimize.

Clicky: Clicky has a limited free option however the real analysis power lies in the paid version so I would recommend trying out the free version if the paid features are must haves for you. Clicky is also a JavaScript tag based solution.

Piwik: Open Source web analytics so you can change anything you want. Piwik uses PHP & MySQL to run on your server and it generates a JavaScript tag for your site. I believe Piwik was the first open source web analytics solution although there are a few other open source web site analytics tools now.

Firestats: Firestats is free for non commercial use and is a PHP & MySQL solution; as with all the other open source web analytics tools it is server based and not JavaScript.

Yahoo Web Analytics: When Yahoo purchased Index Tools the product got renamed to Yahoo Web Analytics. It is only free if you advertise with Yahoo so a bit of a grey area in terms of free. Definitely worth looking at as an alternative to Google Analytics if you advertise with Yahoo. Yahoo Web Analytics is a JavaScript tag based solution.

AWStats: The most basic and very common server side web analytics tool that parses your web server log files. You really should be using at least one other solution since there is very little to no actionable insight with AWStats. At least extend with JAWStats below.

JAWStats: JAWstats is an extension of AWStats that uses a PHP server side script to track your website. It is free and open source.

Mochibot: Need a web analytics tool for Flash? Mochibot is designed specifically so you can track your flash content across the web. Great for Flash games, videos and animations especially if you encourage sharing or embedding. I don’t use much flash so no experience with the tool…yet. Mochibot uses ActionScript so it lives within your SWF flash file. Pretty much if they use flash you will be able to track. One very key advantage here is that Flash cookies don’t get deleted nearly as often as standard web cookies. My understanding is that the only way to delete is manually; thus you can get much more accurate visitor counts.

Grape Web Statistics: Open source GPL web analytics tool. There is a live demo of Grape however I didn’t see anything too impressive. It is in beta so as it matures I would expect more robust reporting.

TraceWatch: Open source real time web analytics solution with a nice feature list including pathing and an API. Uses PHP and installs on your web server. There is a JavaScript tag available for non PHP pages also.

GoingUp.com: If you are into SEO (Search Engine Optimization) the you might want to look at GoingUp. It appears targeted towards SEO & organic traffic. It has a second component called GoingUp! Ranker which checks your site in the search engines. I am a bit leary of pinging Google from my web server because Google does not like automated scripts hitting its search engine even though they send googlebot out to do the exact same thing to everyone else!

Open Web Analytics: An open source PHP based solution that you run on your own server.  No JavaScript tag used. The only downside I see is that if you use WordPress & wp-cache plugin. Unless you installed wp-cache to solve an issue this is worth a look. Claims to have click path analysis which any analyst knows is gold.

BBClone: Down at the time of this writing; I will update when I have more information.

You may notice I left out qualitative feedback tools & mechanisms such as 4Q by iPerceptions. I may do a post about survey tools later because this article is focused on quantitative tools.

I have not personally tried each web analytics tool however I did verify each has a free option; most will give you additional features with a paid option. I plan on trying each tool over time so that may take a bit. I will continue to update this list as things change; leave a comment if I missed your free web analytics tool.