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.

Website Analysis Tools

1. Google Analytics

This should be your starting point, it doesn’t have to be Google Analytics, there are many other Web analytics tools, but you have to have a good Web analytics tool. Using your Web analytics tool you can see what keywords or phrases people are searching for to find your site, which search engines drive the most traffic and what content users are finding. There are advanced Google Analytics tricks that you can use to get more out of the tool.

2. Google Webmaster Tools

This is where you create a Google sitemap and get to see how often Google indexes your home page. Webmaster Tools offers pretty much everything that Google is willing to tell you about your site and how it’s indexed. Google recently added the ability to set the geographic target of your Website and you can also opt-in to enhanced image search which can improve indexing and search quality of images on your Website.

3. Yahoo! Site Explorer

Yahoo’s version of Webmaster Tools. It doesn’t provide as much information as Google’s, but you can add a sitemap or RSS feed and get some information from Yahoo! about your site. Yahoo doesn’t display cached dates like Google does, but Yahoo! Site Explorer shows you when each page on your site (and other sites) was indexed or cached.

4. Xinu

Provides a dashboard view of key SEO indicators of a Web site, including PageRank, number of pages indexed and backlinks. The Diagnostics pane provides details on things like domain name, page size, HTML tags and gives you a thumbs up rating. It even tells you how long your site has existed and the blog owner.

5. Poodle Predictor

A good search engine simulator tool. Enter your URL, click on “Poodle Search” and then on “Diagnostic View”. There are many other search engine simulator tools, but I like how this one displays the results.

6. SEO for Firefox

A Firefox plugin that provides easy access to SEO related information about a page or link. When enabled it highlights “nofollow” links in red.

Keyword Research Tools

7. Google Trends

Search engines don’t share detailed search statistics, but you can use Google Trends to get a good idea of how popular search terms are. If you have a keyword that ranks #1 then you can use that as a base for comparison against other keywords to get a gauge for how much traffic one could expect from those keywords. Since the main purpose of the tool is to see trends it is of course very useful to see if keywords are growing in popularity. There’s also a section called Hot Trends that lists the current 100 “hot” keywords. These keywords offer good AdWords opportunities.

8. Microsoft adCenter Labs

As described in a previous post on keyword search funnels and demographic predictions, adCenter Labs gives a very interesting perspective on keywords and helps you to better understand what your users look like and the thought process that they go through when doing searches. The Search Funnel and Keyword Forecast tools are particularly cool.

9. Yahoo! Buzz Index

A service by Yahoo! that resembles Google’s Hot Trends. The Yahoo! Buzz Index shows the day’s top 20 searches in various categories including actors, movies and sports.

10. Keyword Discovery

Search term suggestion tool. They offer a free tool that lists up to 100 top keywords for a given keyword or phrase ranked by the number of searches over the last 12 months. The premium version of Keyword Discovery has a lot more functionality and a much slicker interface than Wordtracker.

11. Wordtracker

Probably the most popular subscription based keyword research tool, but like Keyword Discovery they also offer a free keyword suggestion tool that lists the top 100 search terms ranked by searches.

12. Google AdWords Keyword Tool

The tool is really intended for paid search research, but it is a useful keyword suggestion tool.

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

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).