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Ask HN: Alternatives to Google Analytics

37 points by gokhan ↗ HN
Here in Turkey, some Google services sharing the same IP block with YouTube are banned, including Google Analytics. Classic Analytics code prevents browsers from completely loading, resulting in page load time hell. An alternative is the asynchronous code (http://code.google.com/apis/analytics/docs/tracking/asyncTracking.html), but there's no point of using a serviceunable to track page views.

What are the alternative services you recommend? I just installed Clicky but wanted to know my options.

37 comments

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Concours
http://piwik.org/ , you may need to host it on your own servers.
mootothemax
Second vote for Piwik. It's free and open-source, install it on one domain and you can then add multiple sites to it, just like Google Analytics. In fact, I've found it's significantly sped up my page loading times, although need to test this further.

In addition there are plugins for every major CMS and blogging system out there. I'm just waiting for the time that the ClickHeat* plugin works :)

* ClickHeat is a free heatmap available here: http://www.labsmedia.com/clickheat/index.html

ihodes
http://haveamint.com/ is a nice product by Shaun Inman. It's $30 for a site license, though.
dhimes
I was happy to pay the $30, FWIW
Skyline
Mint is great if you're running a Wordpress blog
eliot_sykes
Good to hear you've installed Clicky, I use them over Google Analytics (and am very happy) as I'm admittedly paranoid but uncomfortable about giving Google precise traffic stats when they know how much you spend on Adwords.
byoung2
Make sure you don't have AdSense installed as well!
Freebytes
Do not forget to voice your opinion with your government about your discontent in them blocking Google while you are at it. (Write a letter or protest.) There is really no reason why Google should be blocked by your country.
paraschopra
Open source: http://piwik.org

Clicky: http://getclicky.com/ (This is a good one)

Woopra: http://woopra.com/

mitchellhislop
+1 to clicky. The real time stats are a very nice addition to a solid suite of tools.

My one gripe with them is they seem to do more processing of the data, rather than just letting you find the numbers you need. I am a data hound, so YMMV

_sgo4
Could you elaborate on your gripe? (I'm the co-founder/lead dev)
ApolloRising
Why do you say this on your site: * Note: we do not allow any individual sites that receive over 500,000 daily page views.
_sgo4
Well the more traffic a site has, the more resources we need to process that traffic. 500,000 daily page views is currently the max we allow to ensure our service runs smoothly for everyone. This limit is higher than most other analytics services allow, and easily covers 99.9% of the sites on the internet.
mitchellhislop
It just seems like Clicky is more focused on giving "easier" to grok numbers than GA, and makes it a little harder to get some of the more custom numbers.
_sgo4
Fair enough. But that's also one of the reasons we're successful, because we make stats/analytics easy to understand. GA is a very powerful piece of software but it also has a fairly steep learning curve. A lot of our users are ex-GA users who stopped using GA because they just didn't get it.

We have plenty of users who use both Clicky and GA together though. Clicky does "most" of what people need and they like the real time aspect, but when they really need to dig deep into complex analysis, that's when they hit up GA.

iamelgringo
I really like both clicky and Woopra. I end up using Woopra more, however.
_sgo4
What do you like about Woopra more than Clicky?
pavs
I like woopra too and I just checked out clicky's demo page. Clicky is really nice. But if I were to compare woopra to clicky, I think woopra has a nicer interface/visualization. They just did an update yesterday on their web interface and its now almost as good as the desktop client.

I use three analytic and all of the them are free. I don't use woopra anymore, but I will probably use them if I am looking for a commercial solution. Clicky seems to have more customized tracking solution and looks like a better solution for people who are looking for a more in-depth tracking data.

mschaecher
What are the three free ones you use?
pavs
Google Analytics.

Sitemeter.

Wordpress SiteStats.

The only one I frequently check for basic, quick, stats check is Sitemeter. If I want to go in to details I will check the other two every few weeks.

enjo
Can any of these tools handle offline conversions? That's our biggest issue... the main purpose of our site is to generate offline activity. We can measure those conversions (phone calls) and even tie them back where they originated. We just need a tool that we can stuff that data into and actually visualize it in some meaningful way.
misterbwong
I've been wanting to try clicky as an alternative to our homegrown tracking but I'm saddened by the 500k visitor limit. Are there any services out there that can handle 2M+ views that are similar in quality?

edit: stupid me i spaced out. it's a 500k daily pageview limit not monthly. doh! this should work.

_sgo4
Hmm, I see how some people might be confused by that, since page views are typically talked about in monthly terms. I updated the registration page to list both daily and monthly limits.
dpezely
What are your criteria for analytics?

If you require third-party reporting for vetting your traffic numbers to potential advertisers, there are services such as Quantcast.com.

The big fish in the game is Omniture.com, recently acquired by Adobe. It's worth looking at their documentation because they have become (arguably) the de facto standard in many areas of web analytics, particularly marketing analytics for websites. Knowing their jargon and how they bucket data can be useful in those conversations.

Many people want free as in zero out-of-pocket expense and freedom to customize. More on that below...

The trade-off with completely free techniques is that you lose any demographic or psychographic profiling that a larger service provider might offer. If this subject matters to you, BlueKai.com would be a good starting point, but be prepared to talk about marketing "funnels". (Not sure if they accommodate beyond US, though.)

For leveraging this class of data, real-time ad networks such as Adchemy.com use these technique to drive traffic. They'll likely be expanding beyond US soon. [full disclosure: my current employer is a partner of theirs]

Back to free:

If you simply want to know basic facts about traffic landing on your pages and considering the HN crowd, you could likely get by with a little JavaScript code that generates a URL with query-strings identifying those facts. Then use JS to insert an image into the page, fetching a 1x1 transparent pixel from your own server, thereby logging the facts. Various tools for analyzing HTTP logs are available for bucketing, graphing, etc.

The Nginx HTTP server has native support for serving transparent pixels and has a very light load (e.g., an Intel Atom CPU on your DSL line is more than adequate; under US$200 complete). Since it's all under your control, this approach can still work with dynamic IP addressing of the pixel server.

Some relevant JS fields and function calls include: navigator.cookieEnabled, screen.height, screen.width, screen.colorDepth, navigator.plugins['Shockwave Flash'], window.ActiveXObject() with "ShockwaveFlash.ShockwaveFlash" [but search for caveats regarding known bugs with Flash 6.0.21, .23, .29].

Add your own session ID to the query-string, and you have unique visitor journey tracking as well. Usual caveats apply due to visitors who clear cookies, etc.

Again, considering the HN crowd, this minimal treatment should be sufficient.

brazzy
AWStats is a tool that generates statistic pages from the server logs. It doesn't even require you to put anything on the pages; all you need is access to the logs. It doesn't offer quite as much information as Google Analytics, but it's pretty good.

http://awstats.sourceforge.net/

l4u
i use piwik but you need to host it yourself