June 23, 2005
Server log analysis
I’m swamped with work, and in my free time I’ve been writing madly. And I’m getting back to that in just a second, but I wrote this up quickly as a reply to someone and then realized that it was too long and I really should just post it here instead.
I just went through, for the second time in a year, an evaluation of of the professional-grade log analyzers. Since this might be helpful to someone…
Free ones: Webalizer, AWStats, Analog (with Report Magic)
Not free: Urchin, NetTracker, WebTrends, and ClickTracks.
My favorite is Urchin 5, and I’m profoundly grateful that my host offers it as part of my plan. It isn’t cheap — around $900. Then again, the version of WebTrends that offers the same features costs somewhere around $10K.
Webalizer and Analog are the most common free ones, but I like AWStats better than either. The free ones tend to be inflexible, showing you only the most popular 10 pages on your site. If you want to see numbers on a new page that’s getting a lot of traffic right now but hasn’t yet surpassed your top 10… no go.
And then there’s Refer, which doesn’t produce pretty graphs of any kind, but is really great for tracking inbound links as they appear. ShortStat is also really cool. (This seems to be the most recent version.) I gather it’s soon to be replaced by Mint. These two don’t analyze logs, but rely on bits of PHP embedded in the page instead. Both are free. (I’m guessing Mint won’t be. Update: Ah, I was right. Here’s the scoop on Mint.)
Update 3/30/06: A Complete Guide To Web Analytics Solutions has a more complete list and more up-to-date info. Check the comments on the post for readers’ suggestions on packages the authors missed.
Comments
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Posted by pericat on June 23rd, 2005 at 10:54 pm
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Webalizer is unnecessarily ugly.
Good idea about populating the spam-be-gone section that way!
Posted by steph on June 24th, 2005 at 8:32 am
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All ugliness is necessary. Long live Webalizer! :)
Posted by Phil on June 24th, 2005 at 8:42 am
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I have statcounter and it’s pretty useful. I can certainly always see how a new page is going etc.
Posted by Justine Larbalestier on June 25th, 2005 at 10:45 am
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That’s an amazing amount of features for a free service. They drive me nuts, though — along with sitemeter, as pericat mentioned — because their servers aren’t as instantaneous as they like to advertise, and when they slow down, the tracked pages take ages to load. Statistics really, really need to be kept on the same server as the site.
Posted by steph on June 26th, 2005 at 3:58 pm
I like Refer a lot. I use it to populate the spammer-be-gone section of my htaccess, on the theory that spurious linkage comes from the same set of people that run spambot scripts.
My hosting provider has been testing AWStats for the last few months and I greatly prefer it over Webalizer; it stores a much more comprehensive picture. And the colours are nicer, too.
Another point in Refer’s favour, as opposed to sitemeter or the like: Refer’s data is stored locally. The idea of perfect strangers monitoring my traffic kinda squicks me.