ConversionRater - Pat McCarthy's Blog.

It’s been far too long since I’ve posted about web analytics. When I started this blog back in 2003 that subject was the initial focus and it led to some of my most popular posts such as the annual Complete Guide to Web Analytics.

I wish I would’ve kept that going, but unfortunately my focus changed and I wasn’t paying as much attention to the space so it didn’t feel right to do the guide again. However, throughout this time I’ve continued to consistently use the various public website tracking services such as Compete, Alexa, Quantcast, and Google AdPlanner to do research, check out competitors, and watch the sites that I’ve built over time.
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Google recently announced a new addition to their Google Trends tools called “Google Trends for Websites”. In short, you can now use Google Trends to see traffic estimates, related sites, and related searches for website URLs you enter into the tool by regions and over different time periods.
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Read/Write Web does a nice roundup of 10 free and innovative web analytics tools. I’ve used most of them but I’m excited that they brought up a few new ones to try. My thoughts on the tools that I have used they mention:
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I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I like what Quantcast is doing in trying to measure the web. Everyone complains about the inaccuracies of Alexa and other similar ranking tools, and they have good reason to complain.

The reason I like Quantcast is because they actually give publishers code to put on their site so you can actually send them real traffic data in which to rank your site accordingly and report interesting demographics and other information. As a publisher not only will you be ranked more accurately, but you can use the information to help pitch your site to advertisers.
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Centernetworks has a nice background interview with Sean Hammonds who is one of the founders of analytics solution Clicky.

I’ve mentioned it before, but Clicky is currently my favorite blog analytics solution. It isn’t as high-powered as a lot of solutions out there, but it has a very usable interface and some nice features not seen in other applications. What’s maybe the most impressive thing though is that Clicky is self-funded and built by just Sean as the programmer, and his partner who handles business matters. Great applications can be made by a small team!