Best Web Stat Program?

[BillyVegas]

Anyone have any leads on the best Web Statistic program out there? I need to track consumer data to my companys website better than they have (which is nothing). I found WhosOn to look useful, but wanted to know what everyone thought the best would be?

Thanks

-Bill

[edited by: Receptional at 9:23 am (utc) on Oct. 15, 2005]
[edit reason] No URLs please [/edit]

[rfontaine]

Analog.

The internet is a stateless protocol.

Every stat program you use will give often vastly different results. If you want to impress people with high numbers, give a bunch of stats programs a test - awstats, webalizer, webtrends.... - and pick the one that shows your site in the best light.

[larryn]

Billy,

This is asked so much that there is a thread just on this topic:

[webmasterworld.com...]

Enjoy!

[waziwazo]

You can boost your stat counting bots, spider and peoples that have multiple IP like AOL users, but this is not a good practice if you need the data for let say a targetted marketting campaign.

Before filtering 48% of my visitors are from USA after filtering bots, spiders and AOL this number drop to only 3%

[borninblood]

"Before filtering 48% of my visitors are from USA after filtering bots, spiders and AOL this number drop to only 3% "

Same thing happened to me, was well annoyed.

It would be good to see some kind of standardisation for getting web statistics, then it would be more the presentation of them that would sway where people go to get them.

[willthegeek]

There is really no 'Best'. Stats services provide many options and features. But as rfontaine says the stateless nature of the web makes tracking difficult. The most accurate systems use cookies, ip addresses or both to determine unique visitors. None are foolproof, however. Web Stats Gold is one that I know uses both systems in tandem to get the best figures they can under the circumstances.

But if you want to get a good list, go to MSN and look up "Web Site Statistics". You will get a list of some of the best providers. By looking at their features and tutorials, you will get a pretty good picture of what can be done.

Regards,

Will