Best Traffic Analysis Script

[aibrahim]

Hi all,

There are tons of web traffic analysis scripts. Can any of you suggest a script with its pros and cons. Please help?

[bmc]

If you're talking about free hosted web traffic analysis scripts, you can always check out Google Analytics. I also got into the private beta recently for Reinvigorate, and I absolutely love the detailed web application! Also, if you run your own server/website, I would definitely recommend looking into Mint (I own two copies myself and am completely satisfied - it's definitely worth the $30!).

[mlx]

If you are looking for a free solution check out http://awstats.sourceforge.net/

[jasonlitka]

I personally like Google Analytics but there are a lot of people who block the GA JavaScript because they think Google is spying on them.

[Floris]

I use GA myself too.

[bkbelew]

I use Omniture it's pretty advanced.
http://www.omniture.com/sem?s_scid=omniture|487972745

[aibrahim]

Thanks bmc and all,

My website is a media website offering mp3s for all genres. I already subscribed with Google Analytics for the short term but I might wanna migrate to something more detailed. Here is my issue will Google Analytics be able to track media content or mp3? I would also like to access the data and create a top 10 list. What is the best traffic analysis script for tracking media content.

Ali

I subscribed with my gmail account.

[aibrahim]

Google provides a snipet to add in webpages in

<script src="http://www.google-analytics.com/urchin.js" type="text/javascript">
</script>
<script type="text/javascript">
_uacct = "UA-1839003-1";
urchinTracker();
</script>

I have two urls to my discussion board, where do I add the tracking capability:

http://www.omdur.com/board/forumdisplay.php?f=7

http://www.omdur.com/board/index.php?

These are sensitive files so I don't wanna tamper with them. I have Vbulletin 3.0 so how would I do it?

[jasonlitka]

The Google Analytics code needs to go on every page on your site. I'd recommend just adding it to the header or the footer template (the former will record every hit but may slow your site slightly, the latter will not interfere with the loading of your content but may not register every hit).

[SaN-DeeP]

Google Analytics is better then awstats only because all statistics/processing is done on google servers, we just need to add in code snippet to our pages as mentioned by jason.

[aibrahim]

Thanks yes it looks amazing. Howver, I do not see any data regarding media streaming or mp3 downloads. How do I track mp3s or media?

[kmike]

No way to track those unless you use some script which will redirect to an actual download.

It's an inherent deficiency of all 3rd party traffic analysis services which require an HTML code snippet on every page vs the log file analysers like awstats or webalizer - if you can't include their code snippet on some page, it effectively doesn't exist in the stats. And obviously you can't include their code in your mp3 downloads or media streaming. It also means the 3rd party traffic analysis stats are always less accurate than the stats from the web server log file analysers.