I started using Google Analytics to start monitoring the traffic on my blog, but unfortunately I never seemed to get any hits on Google Analytics. I knew the problem was with the insertion of the code, but I did try inserting the code in different places and Google Analytics would say the status was right and it was tracking, but no matter what the hits remained a zero always. Thankfully, I was also tracking my blog on the excellent IceRocket Blog Tracker and I also had a StatPress plugin installed on my blog so I was aware of the number of hits I was getting on my blog. Finally, of course I got Google Analytics to work on my blog so now I have another method to monitor the stats on my blog and all of them are in agreement too about the number of visitors on my blog.
I did, however, come across a blog “Top 5 Web Analytics Apps that are better than Googles Analytics” by Speckyboy recommended by DailyBlogTips. DailyBlogTips is a blog that I frequent regularly, bookmark it for great articles. This article by Speckyboy listed 5 web analytic apps that according to the author are better than Google Analytics. Of the listed 5, I personally have heard of and used only Crazy Egg. Due to lack of time I am not able to check out the others personally, but shall do so if time permits, but you can go ahead and check them out for yourself and settle on the one that works best for you.
My personal recommendation and something I personally use is IceRocket Blog Tracker http://tracker.icerocket.com/. For starters you can hide their code i.e. get invisible code to place on your site so that no one else will see the code while it tracks the visitor stats to your blog. You can view reports by Day-by-Day Rank, Rank History, Last Visits, Referrers, Keywords, Geolocation, Pages by URL, Pages by Title, Browsers, Operating Systems, and Screen Resolutions. The two features I use a lot are Geolocation to know where my visitors are coming from and Keywords to know what words they are using to search to get to my blog. Referrers too is useful to know how the visitors are getting to your blog i.e. via a search engine or a social network, really useful if you are using a forum or ads to increase traffic to your blog, this section will let you know where your traffic is coming from. All in all, IceRocket is my choice of a Blog Tracker and you can check it out too along with the list by Speckyboy.
