Web Analytics refers to application that enables organizations to easily, effectively and cost-effectively measure, collect, manage and analyze website data. Because of a growing number of organizations committing to become more data-driven, analytics tools have been designed to support them. This article presents a list of web analytics tools including Google Analytics, Coremetrics from IBM and WebTrends from Axciom.
Web Analytics is the art and the science of gathering, reporting, analyzing, and using information about the behavior of visitors to a website. It helps businesses understand their audience so they can make data-driven business decisions. Tools are the web applications used for doing this.
Moz Keyword Explorer
While SEMrush is often cited as a top keyword search tool, there might be a new sheriff in town since SEO software company Moz launched its own tool this May. It’s more comprehensive than most keyword search options out there, and it’s built to take the manual labor out of keyword research. As founder Rand Fishkin writes, the tool “takes you all the way through the keyword research process—from discovering keyword ideas to getting metrics to building a list, filtering the keywords on it, and prioritizing which ones to target based on the numbers that matter.”
Once you search a term, you’ll first see an overview of the analysis. For instance, here’s Fishkin’s example of a search for “Striped Shirts”:
At the top of the page, you’ll see five metrics, which can help you determine how valuable the term might be for your content efforts. You’ll also be able to click on a SERP (Search Engine Results Page) analysis, which shows you the actual Google search result for that keyword, including any images or AdWords ads that appear.
If you’re looking to include this keyword in your content, Moz offers suggestions of up to 1,000 related terms, ranked by relevancy and volume. You can filter those suggestions to show keywords from a mix of sources, keywords that only include the terms your search for, or keywords that don’t include the terms you searched for—if you want fresh ideas.
To save your research, simply add your keywords to a list. From there, you’ll be able to compare, sort, and rank them by importance.
While the service is free, there is a usage limit. Anyone can run two keyword searches each day at no charge; community members get an additional five searches. For more comprehensive access to the tool, you can buy the standalone service starting at $600 per year or become a Moz PRO member.
Cyfe
Cyfe is an all-in-one dashboard that helps you monitor data across multiple sites and applications, such as Google AdWords, Salesforce, PayPal, MailChimp, and WordPress.
Not only can you see all of this data in one place, but you can also customize your dashboard with over 40 widgets for different sources and platforms. And if you don’t find what you want from Cyfe’s widget pool, you can create your own widgets. All you have to do is upload external data from your source, CSV, or Google Sheet. For example, you might want a donut graph of certain results shown in orange, blue, and green.
Once your dashboard is up, you can create real-time reports to download and share. If that’s not enough, you can even connect Cyfe to your TV and rotate one or more dashboards on the big screen.
Google Search Console
Previously called Google Webmaster Tools, Google’s search insights tool was rebranded to be more inclusive of “everyone who cares about Search,” including “hobbyists, small business owners, SEO experts, marketers, programmers, designers, app developers.”
The platform basically helps you make sure your website or Android app is Google-friendly and shows up in relevant search results.
Google Search Console helps website owners optimize their pages by providing three important resources:
- Search analytics reports, which show how often your site appears in Google search results, how many clicks and impressions came from those results, and which queries prompted those results. You can also compare data to see how your search results fare between mobile and desktop users, U.S. and UK visitors, etc.
- Alerts for errors or issues. If you run a URL that Google can’t crawl or that returns an HTTP error code, Google will send a notification so you can address the problem.
- Tests to see if Google can “understand” your content. Through a program called Fetch as Google, you can see whether the Googlebot can access a page on your site. If there are issues, you can even see if resources such as images are being blocked by the bot. This way, you can go back in and debug your site, if need be.
For the most seamless experience with Google data, connect your Google Analytics pages with your Search Console pages so you can access a more comprehensive view of your site’s performance. For instance, as SERPs points out, Google Search Console can track data from web users who have disabled Javascript—something Google Analytics can’t do on its own.
Baidu Analytics
What it is: traffic analytics from Chinese search engine Baidu
What it’s used for: recording website visitors, traffic sources, and conversions
Price: from free
Another 1% of our 2000+ analytics experts use Baidu Analytics (also known as Baidu Tongji). Baidu Analytics offers standard traffic analytics data, integrates with Baidu’s PPC platform (Baidu Tuiguang) to provide ad performance metrics, and shows organic search keyword data from Baidu’s search engine.
MochiBot
MochiBot is a free Web analytics/tracking tool especially designed for Flash assets. With MochiBot, you can see who’s sharing your Flash content, how many times people view your content, as well as helping you track where your Flash content is to prevent piracy and content theft. Installing MochiBot is a breeze; you simply copy a few lines of ActionScript code in the .FLA files you want to monitor.
Conclusion
Creating compelling, personal experiences requires more than technology that tracks website visits. You need information about your customers, their behavior when they browse your site, and how they interact with your brand. This article covers the most popular, in-demand collection tools making waves in the field of web analytics.