Google Analytics vs Fusestats Free Log Analysis Software

I'm using Google Analytics on a couple of my sites. All the features of Google Analytics are completely free. It isn't one of those free softwares that give you only half of what you need in an effort to entice you to purchase a paid version.

There is also no arguing that Google Analytics is top shelf. It includes every feature that you would ever want in a software. It features Geo Targeting, E-commerce Tracking, Adwords Integration, and Custom Dashboards. But even at free and with all of it's features, I have no plans of adding Google Analytics to any more of my sites.

I'm no conspiracy buff, but face it, the bean counters at Google didn't hand out Analytics to every webmaster for free out of the kindness of their heart. You can bet that Google is tracking the costs associated with Analytics under "Research and Development" on their income statement. This is just one way for Google to determine the things they could have never known before.

Google can easily mine data from your site and get information on all of the other search engines and websites that are sending you traffic. Plus, I have no desire of putting all of my sites under one Google Analytics account and having Google make some determination on the cross linking structures of my sites to see if they consider it appropriate or not.

My search for a good log analysis software program wasn't an easy one. There are plenty of programs out there ranging from free to $15,000+ per month. Sorting through them was no easy task.

Nearly every hosting account includes some type of free log analysis program. Most of the free versions I found were crap. Seriously, what use is a log analysis program that only shows the top 20 keywords that brought your site traffic, if you are generating traffic across 100s or 1,000s of keywords?

I wanted a program that was affordable, could handle all 43 of my websites in one interface, and gave me access to the data I needed. I believe I found that in Fusestats.

I'm currently signed up for the free version which allows tracking on 5 domains and up to 15,000 page views per month. I plan to use it on a few of my smaller sites for the next few weeks. If it turns out to be everything it appears to be, I plan to sign up for the Pro Edition at $9.95 per month. The Fusestats Pro Edition offers tracking on 20 domains and supports 40,000 page views per month.

Fusestats has some really good features and offers everything you will find in Google Analytics in addition to heat maps. These heat maps show the "hot areas" on your site and where visitors are clicking. This is a really awesome feature. There is a screen shot from a typical heat map below.

I'll provide an update in a few weeks on how my Fusestat trial is going and if it finally ended my search for an affordable log analysis software with excellent features.

Posted by: Brent Crouch on 19 Aug, 20073 Comments »