No one market research tool is perfect and often it is best to look at more than one to get the information that you need. It is so much easier when they’re free! So here are four of the best free tools that you can use for competitive analysis.

Google Ad Planner

The [big] new kid on the block that launched a few months ago, and when it did it knocked comScore shares down by over twenty percent. In typical Google style it is free and all you need is a Google account – that’s why we love Google!. The reason why Google Ad Planner made such an impact on comScore shares is because Google has so much more data – and information – at their disposal and just like Search, they have the ability to crush anyone in that space. Ad Planner gathers its data from:

a variety of sources, such as aggregated Google search data, opt-in anonymous Google Analytics data, opt-in external consumer panel data, and other third-party market research. link

Ad Planner has huge potential with their incredible database of marketing intelligence. Learn more about Ad Planner from this great post by Avinash Kaushik.

P.S. It is quite disturbing that they block stats to google.com, but not to Yahoo! or Microsoft! (You need to be logged in with your Google account to access these links)

Quantcast

The two year old company has been making quite a splash. Quantcast’s claim to fame is that they supplement panel data with server-level data from participating publishers via JavaScript tagging. What I do find really interesting is their approach towards bridging the gap between on-line and off-line marketing data: less people than cookies, rather than more people than circulation.

Addressing this challenge requires innovation in bridging the inherent differences between the directly measureable cookies and estimates of people. This is not unlike challenges that the media industry has previously faced in bridging the “what� (raw traffic) and the “who� (actual people) in Print. The magazine industry provides an analogy to the challenges in the digital space in that circulation is a “census� level data point (it represents the reported number of magazines printed and distributed) which is coupled with panel data for people-based adjustments (readers per copy, demographics, etc). As we shall see, in digital the correction factors are reversed (less people than cookies, rather than more people than circulation) but the hybrid approach leveraging raw circulation and panel data is relevant. link

Compete

CompeteInc, a research firm, also launched their competitive analytics service called Compete about 2 years ago and they are seen as the main Alexa alternative, mostly because of their toolbar. Compete collects it’s click stream data from participating ISPs, the Compete Toolbar and opt-in panels. Not everyone approved at first, but they have been quite busy as can be seen in their blog and they are continually improving.

However, they really are punting their premium services and are not giving enough away for free. Their free Site Analytics reports are the main attraction and they are excellent, but their Search Analytics and Referral Analytics are simply sample teasers. Perhaps they’ll loosen up now that Google has entered the market space!

Alexa

Alexa has been around for a decade in spite of all the criticism of their data collection methods and how their stats can be manipulated. Even McAfee SiteAdvisor warns that their toolbar could be spyware. However, it remains a handy tool for quickly checking Web site metrics and for doing sanity checks.

Once you’ve installed the plugin and accepted the terms and conditions, you will start seeing the WASP icon in your browser’s status bar that tells you which tracking tools it has identified.

Clicking on the icon will open a sidebar with a tabbed view of all the tracking tools. Each tab represents a tracking instance on the page you are viewing, e.g. an ad, and shows the detailed data that is being sent to them.

WASP is a very useful debugging tool for implementing Web analytics solutions like Omniture because it gives you an easy way to see if you have tagged your Web site correctly. I used the “Omniture debugger” until recently when I heard about WASP in an Omniture training session.

1. How to track file downloads, clicks on outbound links or Flash

Google Analytics provides an easy way to track clicks on links that lead to file downloads like PDFs or MP3s, outbound links and Flash. Simply include an onClick event in the hyperlink that calls the urchinTracker JavaScript. Link.

2. Integrate Google Website Optimizer with Google Analytics

3. Identify additional search engines in the Referral reports

By default, GA tracks referrals from 20 search engines, however, you can add additional search engines by adding _uOsr and _uOkw variables to your tracking code. When you look closely at your Referring Source report you may notice some sources where the Medium is “referral” and that are search results on Web sites that should come through as “organic”. Link.

4. Tracking full referrer URLs

A common complaint about Google Analytics is that it truncates URLs at the end of the pagename and cuts off the querystring. So on sites that use query parameters as page identifiers, some reports will show aggregate numbers for those pages. There are two ways one can address this issue:
1. Use the urchinTracker to record the whole URL. Link
2. Create a User-defined report by using Custom Filters. With Custom Filters you can manipulate data before GA simplifies it and therefore one can do lots of interesting things like extracting segments into extra profiles. Link.

5. Track AdSense clicks

There is a lot of debate on the legality of using GA to track AdSense clicks, but if you are interested this is how you can do it. Link.

6. Custom Segmentation

The utmSetVar variable can be used to assign users to a certain segment. E.g. you could use the variable to track users that viewed a particular page. The variable populates the User-Defined report (Marketing Optimization > Visitor Segment Performance > User-Defined) report. Note that only the first value of this variable is recorded. Link.

7. Use link tagging to track campaigns

UPDATE: The new version of Google Analytics is out and while the reports have changed the configuration and advanced tricks mentioned above have not. Phew!

The Search Funnels tool offers another very interesting Web analysis. It answers the question: What do users search for after they searched for the keyword in question. E.g. what did users search for after they first searched for flower power? adCenter helps you visualize and analyze your customers’ search behaviors.

These kinds of Web analytics tools are very useful for effective paid search campaigns. Some of the other tools that they offer are:

• Keyword forecast: Forecast the impressions count and demographic predictions using one or more search terms.
• Seasonal keyword forecast: Forecast the seasonality patterns of search queries
• Detecting online commercial intent: Find out if your customer intends to buy, sell or complete another online transaction based on their search queries and/or other sites visited

The idea was to give keywords more importance in title tags by placing them first, e.g. a page formerly titled “Da Vinci Planet ›› Blog Archive ›› Essential Portable Apps” is now titled “Essential Portable Apps | Da Vinci Planet“. Google’s search results pages have since updated and are now showing the “SEO friendly” page titles. The results are somewhat surprising!

For the search term “essential portable apps”

Before: Positioned 2nd of about 1,370,000 results

Now: Positioned 2nd of about 1,390,000 results

Result: Position unchanged

For the search term “remove popcorn”

Before: Positioned 3rd of about 1,140,000 results

Now: Positioned 5th of about 1,260,000 results

Result: Position down from 3rd to 5th

For the search term “Top Web Analytics Tools”

Before: Positioned 94th of about 18,100,000 results

Now: Positioned 280th of about 23,400,000 results

Result: Position down from 94th to 280th! Total indexed Web pages increased by about 30%.

Conclusion

My position went down for two of the three search terms. Especially the last one, from 94th to 280th! Not that 94th was any good to start with: ) The number of pages that Google has indexed on the Web has increased for all three search terms – as one would expect – and that may have an effect. It’s possible that my page rankings were affected simply because Google detected that the pages were modified. I’ve heard that old is good when it comes to search engines. If that is true then it’s possible their rankings will improve over time. For now I’ll hope so and I will be checking from time to time how they are doing. Either way I’m sticking with the new title format because it looks better. Blissful ignorance?

There are two main methods how Web analytic tools work: log analysis and client side tracking. From experience I can say that client side tracking is by far the best. There are very few benefits of log analysis. Here’s a list of prominent Web analytics tools.

Omniture
Provides real-time measurement and monitoring of a site’s key performance indicators via client side tracking.

Google Analytics
Free (for most) client side tracking with a easy to use user interface.

WebTrends
They have always been the leader, but it seems they got hung on log analyis and while they now offer both client side tracking and log analysis solutions they have fallen behind.

NetTracker
They positioned themselves against Webtrends and also got caught in the middle between Omniture and Google Analytics with not much room. Log based and tracking pixel solutions available.

WebSideStory
Omniture’s closest competitor. Great enterprise solution, but they don’t seem to have the pasion that Omniture has for their business.

The Webalizer
Free log based analysis that’s been around for a while and many hosting providers offer Webalizer with their hosting solutions.

Nielsen//Netratings
Nielsen have the name, but they didn’t have a product so they bought RedSheriff. Enterprise solution that falls short of Omniture and WebSideStory.

Opentracker
Opentracker is tracking pixel based. Not free, but inexspensinve. Has interesting live demo.

OneStat
Free stat counter.

DeepMetrix LiveSTATS
Recently purchased by Microsoft. Will most probably be offered free as a Google Analytics alternative. More to come!

ClickTracks
ClickTracks Appetizer – software, log based – is available for free.

Coremetrics
Has a partnership with IBM and offers an analytics olution tailored for WebSphere Commerce customers.

AWStats
Free, open source. An alternative to Webalizer.

Clickstream
Log based and tracking pixel solutions available, however, not on an ASP model so you host your own analysis software.

Other Web analytics solutions:
eVisit Analyst
IndexTools
SageMetrics
WebtraffIQ
MyBlogLog

Alexaholic blends Alexa website traffic graphs with a lightweight ajax-enhanced interface to satisfy hard-core Alexa traffic chart junkies – aka Alexaholics.

Webmasters, SEO/SEM specialists, and domain owners can compare and measure website statistics for up to five domains at once, switch traffic chart types and ranges without page loads, and generate report pages that are easily bookmarked and shared.

Not surprisingly though, Alexaholic reports that Yahoo gets about three times as much traffic as Google (click on page views tab).

There are two ways to add the tracking code to your WordPress blog: 1) by installing a plug-in and 2) by editing the theme source pages directly.

Install a Google Analytics plug-in.
There are a number of plug-ins available for free and they are mostly similar and very easy to use, including:

• Google Analyticator
• Boakes Google Analytics Plugin for WordPress
• Semiologic Google analytics plugin for WordPress
• OraTransplant – Ultimate Google Analytics plugin for WordPress

Edit your WordPress pages directly.
This is probably the no so smart option, but since I did it I might as well mention it. You will need to edit the source of your theme pages. Login to your WordPress admin tool, select the Presentation tab and then Theme Editor. The Header (header.php) or Footer (footer.php) is normally the best place to insert your Google Analytics code, but make sure that you insert it after the <body> tag in the Header or before the </body> tag in the Footer, depending on which file you inserted the code. After saving the file, preview your blog and view the page source to verify that the tracking code has been inserted. Google Analytics can can lag a few hours to show traffic.