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Google Analytics vs AwStats

By newtoos - Mar. 16, 2008

First off, is there any reason I should not be deploying both solutions - will it slow page load?

The data provided is very similar so is there any reason why I should pick one over the other...


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  1. By an anonymous user on Mar. 16, 2008

    Both tools provide you analytics about your end user. But there is a difference. Google Analytics gathers info by deploying a cookie on client machines. It does not track things like bots, for example.


    AWstats, on the other side, analyzes server-side logs that your webserver generates. So, ANY file requested by ANY client will be logged by your webserver, and AWstats can then process the logs to give you an accurate picture.


    Certain things like incoming client screen resolution, etc. are not tracked by AWstats - they require client-side support. Google analytics provides that.


    hth.


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  2. By an anonymous user on Mar. 17, 2008

    Try www.statcounter.com as well - great service - very simple & accurate.


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  3. By an anonymous user on Mar. 17, 2008

    http://webalizer.org/


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  4. By nannu on Mar. 17, 2008

    Are there any good resources out there that will help you make more sense of the awstats data. It is pretty intuitive but a more formal approach in what to look for and, ideally a tool that can process all the data and give some recommendations on areas of focus/concern/etc.?


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  5. By an anonymous user on Mar. 17, 2008

    Not sure of any tools that process awstats or google analytics data. But you can export any view in Google Analytics into Excel and you can do your own analytics from there. Its a good idea though...


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  6. By an anonymous user on Mar. 27, 2008

    1) Automated browsers (including all spiders like Googlebot, Yahoo! Slurp, MSNBot, etc.) never execute JavaScript in your source code. So, while Google Analytics may do a great job of tracking your human visitors, they’re unable to give you the goods on spider behavior.


    2) No Support for Log Files:

    Log file analysis opposes page tagging when it comes to the technologies behind web analytics. Tools that rely on log files are using hard coded server logs to mine all information. Every request for a file on your site is recorded, along with an IP address, user agent, and in most cases β€” the referral string. While it can be a bit more work to use these applications β€” the data you get back makes it a necessary evil.


    3) You're at Google's mercy:

    This is not really a big deal IMO, because Google allows you to export all the data in a variety of formats.


    You can check out the entire post on the search engine journal - http://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-analytics-fails-for-seo-purpos...


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