In this global arena websites are mushrooming and its analysis and monitoring would be a burning issue if technology and WWW had not gifted us with free online web analytics tools.

Web Analytics is a measuring tool, a metric that measures all the activities on a website, tracks visitors and monitors them. Getting a figure and statistics of your web site will help you promote your online business.

The two main technologies accepted these days are: Web server log file analysis and Page-tagging. Irrespective of technologies used the web statistics serves the same, difference lies in some extra added flexibility and rich interactivity.

In general, web log file analysis lets you generate statistics report in your desirable format, import the report and save on your system. We can view the complete website stats from the first day of visit to last day website is accessed. These stats will include number of unique visitors, number of visits, clicks, pages, hits and bandwidth.

First understand what log analysis is?? Web Log analyzer parses web server (apache, IIS) log files (web transactions i.e. when visitors are on your site) and generates report of how and when websites are accessed by the unique visitors.

Starting from website history which may span from an hour record to years record, you can view these statistics record in different graphical form. The stat also gives you information about the geographical locations from where visitors are coming to your website. Not only visits but visit duration can also be measured. For which keyword your website is searched the most, website bandwidth consumed, web browser through which visitors are coming, referring sites, HTTP status code are various statistical segments covered. You can filter this report for specific country, region or cities. You can also check from which IP address clicks are coming, filter out traffic from your own IP. You can give access to different users; can filter result by eliminating user from specific IP address. Web server log file analysis technology produces detail stats in ASCII or HTML format. Web log files are generated on the server where your site hosts, these log file may be in plain text format or in zip format, user can download it on local host and with the help of analytics tool it can be converted in form of organized report and can be easily readable. With the help of these tools log reports can be generated offline also if you have web log files. Various tools are used to convert log files into organized reports, few of them are:

123 Log Analyzer: this does not require any set for configuration, supports logs from server farms; visitor's geographical statistics, powerful data mining filter are its important features.

Absolute Log Analyzer: This tool is most suited for large websites with unlimited domains. This tool helps you generate 160 detailed reports, instant customization filter, parsing filter and combine several log files into single log file are its important features.

Affinium NetInsight: This log analysis tool is used in large enterprises across channels supported by hosting solutions.

AlterWind Log Analyzer: This tool analyzes web log files of any format and can produce separate report for SEO, Web Promotion and PPC by gathering information from its extensive database covering almost all countries and these reports can also be customized.

Analog: This tool can analyze files from major servers. It is one of the most widely used web log file analyzer because of its several unique features; it can work on any operating system, report can be generated in 32 languages and is highly scalable.

AWFFull: This is also a free web log file analysis tool and mostly used to generate simple reports. No additional set is required but requires additional libraries.

AWStats: This log analysis tool can be used to analyze log files and generate web stats, FTP and email statistics reports in graphical format.

ClickTracks: This tool also uses web log files to visually analyze website visitor's behavior. You can see instant stats of ROI, PPC, SEO and campaigns.

FastStats: This tool is basically used for health websites.

Sawmill: Sawmill is very old and most reliable universal web log file analyzer that analysis web server, mail server and monitors security and provides most scalable and flexible solutions.

Visitors: Very fast web log file analyzer tool that is designed to be executed by the command line, output html and text reports and can process more than lakhs of lines per second.

WebAbacus: This tool provides detailed analysis of visitor's behavior and browser usage.

Webalizer: This software also generates analysis report based on web log files generated by web servers. The stats can be viewed at different time frames geographically.

W3Perl: This is also free tool for website analysis, ftp and mail analysis and record statistics.

Xlogan: Website statistics and analysis is done using web log files.

SurfStats: If you are looking for web server, proxy server or media logs analysis tools - surfStats can generate web statistics and web analytics reports.

But these tools have their own limitation: you can only check but cannot track or monitor these stats figure. Emergence of search engine spiders, dynamic IP addresses, web proxies, web caches made it very difficult to identify unique visitors. Log file accuracy was topic of concern with page cache running in parallel. Example, if you wish to see the landing page, complete path from where and how visitors reached your website it is not possible with web log file analysis technology.

Web Analytics tool based on Page-tagging technology:

MatrixStats: Online web analyzer that is based on page-tagging technique. It is a comprehensive approach to generate a graphical web analysis report. This tool tries to minimize traffic volume just by accounting for sessions not hits and monitor your website performance. Tracking will help to see who is currently on your website and track visitor's behavior. A complete report based on the history of sessions, page usage, browser usage, OS usage can be generated.

PHP Web Statistik: Again, this is online web analytics tool based on page-tagging technology and uses php script with other modular web stats. The log function works with java script image or native php. This tool can cache file pages, can handle cookie, review code, protect password. This is free online tool and can supports linux, windows, freebsd, osx, sun.

Urchin: Urchin analyzes traffic to your website from various other websites and generates reports that are very easy to understand and tracks and extracts contents behind the firewall. But Urchin 6 that will be soon released will be paid.

www.onestatfree.com: Password protected web analytic tool that analyzes, tracks and generates analytics reports, just inserting a piece of code is added in the source code that tracks website activities.

clickbench.com: This is one of the most reliable web traffic measuring tool that provides demographic metrics and statistics, hosted web analytics, online site analytics, visitor click analysis, of your website. The need to monitor, track activities and filter statistics result lead to adoption of new technology of Page-Tagging.

WebTrends: It is used to provide web statistics and leading web analytics solutions. This tool lets you improve your conversion rate and maximize your ROI.

About the Author

Rakhi, is a SEO content writer at Icreon Communications Pvt. Ltd., a offshore software development companay and leading provider of offshore software development outsourcing services in India.