Most people know that Web analytics providers like Google Analytics and Omniture use JavaScript to track user activity on Web sites, but many people do not realize that ad networks like Google Adsense and DoubleClick also track user behavior. It’s even scarier for Web site owners to realize that these third party services have complete visibility into your Web site traffic. WASP is a Firefox plugin that shows what each of these providers are tracking on the page that you are viewing. (more…)

Webmasters and bloggers are normally quite SEO savvy even if they’re not SEO professionals. However, they often neglect SEO efforts and forget about all the useful Web analytics and keyword research tools that are available and so I thought I’d remind readers about some of them. Web analysis tools are getting better everyday so it is good practice to regularly analyze your Website to identify changes and new trends in search traffic. Here is a list of essential tools that you can use to analyze your Website and traffic and to optimize your site for search engines. (more…)

If you own, manage or are in some way involved in a Web site then chances are that you want to know what kind of demographic you are attracting. Are they male or female, young or old? It’s especially interesting when you’re considering paid keywords to attract users. For instance, you may have been trying to target the hippies from the 60’s using the keyword flower power; meanwhile you are attracting young women in their twenties and early thirties! Microsoft adCenter Labs, the R&D team for paid search at Microsoft, offers surprisingly cool paid search researching tools. Their analysis is based on MSN Search data which represents a significant sample group, even if they’re small compared to Google. Their Demographics Prediction tool returns this interesting and visually pleasing result for flower power: (more…)

Web analytic tools have come a long way since log file analysis. Once Webtrends ruled the domain, but in recent years client side visitor tracking has come to the forefront and companies like Omniture and Google Analytics (formerly Urchin) are dominating. Omniture, in particular, has a very rich business optimization offering and is the leader in the enterprise market. Omniture’s Discover and Data Warehouse tools are what make them really stand apart. Google Analytics is the favorite in the free tools department and while it doesn’t have the depth Of Omniture, it is a fantastic tool for small sites and offers a lot of enterprise level features. I have worked a lot with a few of the tools including Webtrends, NetTracker, Omniture, Google Analytics and Webalizer, however, many new tools that track visitor behavior have appeared so I thought I’d take a look. (more…)

Alexa uses statistics gathered with it’s browser toolbar to estimate traffic to Web sites. While the toolbar’s purpose is questionable amongst those concerned about privacy, the free traffic stats can be very useful. Alexaholic uses alexa.com’s traffic data to create comparisons.

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).