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20 Analytics Tools For Blogs

Lee Odden
Lee Odden
Blogging Strategy, Online Marketing, Web Analytics

There are a lot of data points that can be meaningful for tracking blog effectiveness. That is, tracking what happens when visitors arrive at and engage with your blog content. It really comes down to the purpose of your blog. Metrics for a blog that’s focused on making a web site more search engine friendly by adding crawlable content and attracting links is quite different than a blog that’s meant to build thought leadership or brand credibility.

Many of the metrics tools used for blogs are also used for basic web site analytics. That makes sense because many blog initiatives do not have the same kind of budget as web site marketing programs do. Therefore, the analytics employed tend to be low(er) or no cost.

Regardless of the purpose, I’ve assembled a list below of the various tools we use, or have tested to report onsite blog metrics. Pick the service or tool you like the most from the list below or something new for your unique purpose and please share in the comments. The list is in no particular order.

  • 103bees – Free web stats (ad supported) up to 100k visits per month, then it’s $9
  • Enquisite – Free, extremely detailed web stats
  • Hittail – Provides suggested topics for your blog by keywords used in referral traffic
  • Crazy Egg – Provides overlay, list and heat map web stats
  • RobotReplay – Lets you record visitor actions on your site and play them back
  • Clicky – Web stats
  • Google Analytics – Web stats, not really the best for blogs but it’s free
  • StatCounter – Free web stats
  • Co.mments – Track comment threads starting on your blog and follow them elsewhere in a feed
  • Performancing Metrics – Basic is Free, or $3.99 to $16.99 per month for more features
  • Site Meter – Basic Free and Premium versions $6.95 and up
  • Mint – Popular web stats with bloggers for $30 per site
  • MyBlogLog – Basic blog visitor stats and social networking. Free and paid versions.
  • Feedburner Stats – StandardStats Free, TotalStats $4.99/mo
  • WordPress Stats – Free basic blog stats plugin for WordPress blogs
  • eXTReMe Tracking – Free web stats with a paid version for $4.50 per month
  • Web Stat – Many web stats features for $5/mo
  • TraceWatch – Free but you need access to your server which should be running PHP/MySQL

What are your favorite analytics tools for blogs?

About Lee Odden

@LeeOdden is the CEO of TopRank Marketing and editor of TopRank's B2B Marketing Blog. Cited for his expertise by The Economist, Forbes and the Wall Street Journal, he's the author of the book Optimize and presents internationally on B2B marketing topics including content, search, social media and influencer marketing. When not at conferences, consulting, or working with his talented team, he's likely running, traveling or cooking up something new.

Comments

  1. Daan Jansonius says

    January 17, 2008 at 9:56 am

    I use Joost de Valk’s plugin for Google Analytics (http://www.joostdevalk.nl/wordpress/google-analytics/) mainly because it is easy to implement.

    Well, and because I work with him and he made me!

    Can’t really comment on any others or the list as I’ve only just started blogging and am not looking to make any money out of it (yet). So whilst I am keeping track of what’s going on, I haven’t really nosedived into a pile of statistics yet.

  2. Lee Odden says

    January 17, 2008 at 11:20 am

    Daan, thank you for mentioning that! We’ve used Joost’s tool for GA and it should have been on the list above.

  3. Joost de Valk says

    January 17, 2008 at 11:28 am

    Feel free to add it Lee, I wouldn’t mind 😉 And have a look at my blog metrics plugin too 🙂

  4. Nicole Simon says

    January 17, 2008 at 11:36 am

    Why don’t you consider Google Analytics to be a good tool on blogs?

    I have to wonder if you really had a look into what it can do for you, especially with featurs like automated mailing of reports, export of all kind of data, shared access, dedicated visitor trecking down to geo region, clicktracking etc …

    yes, it is a bit more work to set it up due to its complxity, but so far the only reason I use an additional tool (tdstats, free) is because I want to track real times sometimes. But other than that, it is GA only for me, everything else falls flat.

  5. MelC says

    January 17, 2008 at 11:46 am

    Do remember Microsoft Gatineau is in beta and we’re accepting registrations for an invitation:

    http://advertising.microsoft.com/Gatineau

    It is free for adCenter customers, though new customers will have to pay $5 for now…….but not for long 🙂

  6. Lee Odden says

    January 17, 2008 at 12:20 pm

    Nicole, I don’t think Google Analytics is difficult to set up at all. The format of information and types of information are very focused towards measuring outcomes consistent with conversions, sales, etc. Blogs are a different animal with “micro conversions” like RSS subscriptions, comments and trackbacks to be counted. That said, GA is an excellent tool – certainly for the price.

  7. Lee Odden says

    January 17, 2008 at 12:21 pm

    Thanks for that reminder Mel. Havent’ used Gatineau yet but will have one of our team sign up so we can test. So you’re saying Gatineau will be free soon?

  8. Nicole Simon says

    January 17, 2008 at 12:29 pm

    I assume Google will at some point allow me to see the feedburner statistics in GA, in regard to comments and trackbacks I agree – then again I am on a tool what does not provice an easy count of that anyhow.

    And if you go into that, I would say you cant stop with just counting them quantitavly (sp?), you need to go into quality as well.

    But most of what I would call real interaction with a blog does not happen on the site anyway, that would be read in a feedreader, external linkcount from different sources (and not trackback), links in the bookmarking service fitting to your system etc etc. 🙂

  9. MelC says

    January 17, 2008 at 12:25 pm

    It is if you have an adCenter account already:

    Explaination here

  10. David Petherick says

    January 17, 2008 at 1:26 pm

    Although I use Google Analytics and Statcounter, for most content, the most useful data that I can ACT on improve design, architecture or content, or to find out where you are losing people’s attention, comes by using Clicky, which you list. I also find Crazy Egg really useful for testing page layouts, especially landing pages and response forms.

    What I found out just yesterday is that Clicky is due to have some major enhancements added from the 19th of January.

    One will be able to drill down to compare, for example, time spent by those visiting from the UK as against to the US (one can select country, language, browser city, link, search engine or other parameters) , and see that you’re catering fine for US customers, but UK visitors lose interest too fast. The ‘actions per visit’ is an important measure for sites using Ajax / tab interfaces, and for most blog-based sites.

    There’s a preview at

    Best of all, Clicky has a free 21-day trial for its premium service, and has a free service for up to 3 web sites and 1,000 daily page views per day per site. The service also has a developer API for the serious geeks to get their teeth into, and a white label version so that, for example, web developers can sell the service to their customers under their own branding.

    Disclosure: I really like Clicky. Now where’s my affiliate link…

  11. Mano70 says

    January 17, 2008 at 4:22 pm

    Feedburner Stats – StandardStats Free, TotalStats $4.99/mo

    What?
    http://blogs.feedburner.com/feedburner/archives/2007/07/freeburner_for_everyone.php

  12. Andy Beard says

    January 17, 2008 at 7:59 pm

    Note: Pmetrics is a branded version of Clicky

    I would add Excel to the list

  13. Shane Kane - TitleSuccess.com says

    January 17, 2008 at 9:19 pm

    There’s some really great tools on this list. I was unaware of both Crazy Egg and Robot Replay.

  14. paris mano says

    January 18, 2008 at 4:17 am

    Thanks Lee for the very informative article.
    I am just starting to blog and am not familiar with a lot of the tools. I didn’t realize that these tools were available. Thanks again. I have bookmarked this article for future reference.

    Paris Mano

  15. Archna Sajwan says

    January 18, 2008 at 5:27 am

    Thanks Odden,

    It’s truly very helpful list.

  16. meds4all says

    January 18, 2008 at 5:53 am

    I am using G-Analytics and statcounter for my blog. but not satisfy with their reporting. Thanks for showing other analytics…i will try to use other and let see what is the diff and reporting.

  17. Daniel Mcgonagle says

    January 18, 2008 at 7:37 am

    Thanks for the heads up! Really great post. That’s a must-read I must
    say. 🙂

  18. Carib Web Dev says

    January 18, 2008 at 8:36 am

    great post mate!

    I currently use the premium version of Clicky and Google Analytics

  19. MarciDesign says

    January 18, 2008 at 3:11 pm

    Lee,

    You are always providing such terrific information – thanks once again, much appreciated!

  20. Will says

    January 18, 2008 at 6:15 pm

    A well complied list and I will definitely look into the Ice Rocket tool, I already use a combo of typepad/mybloglog/google analytics, etc.

  21. Dee says

    January 19, 2008 at 12:37 am

    A well put together blog. I’ve learned a great deal about blogging from this site.

    Thanks

  22. Deep says

    January 19, 2008 at 5:33 am

    great information…
    i used StatCounter and i found it interesting, now i am also going to test any one of the tools you mentioned here…

  23. Dannah says

    January 20, 2008 at 2:45 pm

    Thanks! I especially like Crazy Egg and Hittail!

  24. Diego says

    January 20, 2008 at 3:10 pm

    Great article and fantastic tools!
    I’ve allready write about it in my Blog.

    I kwon 2 more tools that I think they are very usefull:
    Who’s.amoung.us and ComeStats.
    They have functionallity similar, both are widgets that shows the numbers of people that are visitng our site.

    Thanks!

  25. NewSkill21 says

    January 21, 2008 at 3:13 pm

    Even though I knew most of this already, you just got me as a fan. Because I know you know what you are talking about! Excellent job!

  26. Working at Home Mom says

    January 21, 2008 at 7:55 pm

    Awesome list!! Really can use all of these. Thank you for this post.

  27. Todd says

    January 31, 2008 at 10:20 am

    Another free (with paid options) analytics tool I’d strongly suggest is ClickTale.

    http://clicktale.com

    It essentially records “videos” of people using you site. You can see exactly where they scroll, where their mouse is, and where they click. Even their window size and resizing.

    It’s invaluable for testing landing pages especially but could also be useful for comment forms, sidebar layouts (e.g. RSS feed CTAs), etc.

    Strong recommendation.

    TL

    P.S. Haven’t compared it to RobotReplay yet but look forward to trying that one out. Looks very similar.

  28. Daily Common Sense says

    February 17, 2008 at 2:36 pm

    Awesome, thanks for the list! I wasn’t using any blog analytics tool so far…

  29. Geoserv says

    February 22, 2008 at 8:02 pm

    Great read. I have dotted it.

  30. Jonathan says

    April 6, 2008 at 6:16 am

    I too would recommend ClickTale for insights into how your sites are actually being used.

  31. mark says

    May 16, 2008 at 6:24 am

    opensouce tracking tool social media

    Trendrr.com

    http://trendrr.com

  32. Josh says

    May 16, 2008 at 12:07 pm

    Lets call it pre-analytics

    https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal

    all the tracking systems in the world are worthless if you are not writing about what people are searching for. I always start my projects at adwords

  33. erika-nicole says

    May 20, 2008 at 7:58 pm

    I agree google is not the best. All of my trackers have different numbers. So I’m not sure what my traffic is.

  34. Laurie Englert says

    July 18, 2008 at 7:34 am

    Great list. Very helpful. Thanks!

  35. Clarky says

    September 16, 2008 at 8:28 am

    Great! I am just looking for a better blog analytics,now I think that google analytics and robotreplay would be the two best of all. I will use google analytics and robotreplay.

  36. Melissa Williams says

    November 7, 2008 at 1:45 am

    Thanks for the list. I have just implemented the wordpress stats on my website. Although I had a little trouble getting it installed, it is up and running. Thank again for a great list of resources.

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