Which web stats software to use

What Web Statistics program do you use for your web-sites and domains? There are heaps out there on the web. I've played around with a few, before i found one that was pretty accurate, good reporting and easy to use, and also best of all FREE....well to a point anyway. The first web statistics program i used was CrazyEgg which i didn't find that memorable or easy to use at the time, i think they offered a free trial period, which was very limited and the statistics were way off.

I've now found StatCounter works best for me, i have upwards of 100 domains that i track through this software. I've been using it for about 6 months now. You don't have to put any links on your site in return; i think they support and maintain their project by advertising and links on their web pages.

Anyway, this program is free up to 500 log entries for each site you track. Above this, you do need to sign-up for a paid service. From about US$9 upwards, depending on your traffic levels of course. At the moment i'm using both Statcounter and Google Analytics, just to get a broad picture and also to compare statistics, its good to be able to gauge whether your statistics are accurate and not falsely inflated.

Another good feature most stat tracking software is the ability to block your own IP/Address location so you don't overinflate your page view statistics when you visit your own sites pages.

But, usually most good web-hosts these days will offer you free inbuilt stats and tracking for your domains that you host with them. Usually this can be a very basic or free service that they run on their servers and grant you access to eg SmarterStats
which is a great piece of freeware software, really user friendly and good charting, graph capabilities.

Its best to have a play around, and experiment with a couple and see which works best for you, even use a couple at the same time. Most of the programs have step by step instructions (even breaking it down in laymans terms for the respective blogging or web platform you may use), but in a nutshell its usually just a matter of placing a few lines of tracking code on the pages you wish to record statistics for, and wait up to 24 hours for your pages to reflect the changes.

The code is not visible to visitors (unless you want it to be eg A counter displaying the total number of site visits).
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