Clicky is a new web analytics package that is looking to give the current king of web analytics, Google Analytics, a run for its money. Like any site tracking service, you create an account, insert some code into your pages (or if you are using one of the popular blogging platforms, simply install the relevant plugin), and watch as Clicky gathers statistics for your site in real-time.

The service sets itself apart by being very well designed and easy to read, but also by including extra related features, like the ability to include your FeedBurner statistics, tracking Twitter statistics, and providing an integrated link shortening service based on its related domain name clicky.me.

The free version of Clicky is ad-supported, but a Pro version is also available.

A few of Clicky's more obscure features need a Pro account to use. For example, with a pro account you can set up Twitter searches for your brand name or URL, and then see how many mentions you are getting.

Welcome to Googleholic - your bi-weekly fix of everything Google! In this edition:

• Google Gears gets some updates
• YouTube introduces Living Legends
• Google Analytics adds new graphing options
• Google to lay off ~300 DoubleClick employees and sell Performics Search Marketing

Welcome to Googleholic - your bi-weekly fix of everything Google, the day-late, extra-tasty edition!

This edition covers:

• AJAX Language API
• Google Analytics benchmarking goes live
• YouTube 2007 Video Award Winners
• Google Apps get newest Gmail features

How much data do you think Google has about you and your browsing habits? Crazy amounts. Scary amounts. Volumes of data that make our veins run cold and keep us awake at night. But, hey, they kinda own the web, right? So what can you do?

Forty One of the most popular 100 sites on the web use Google to track their visitors. As it turns out, it's pretty simple to opt-out of Google Analytics data collection. Blog Boing shows us how, "For the more privacy cautious between us the solution for preventing any site's Google Analytics to record any information on us is quite simple. Just add to your hosts file the following lines:"

127.0.0.1 www.google-analytics.com
127.0.0.1 google-analytics.com
127.0.0.1 ssl.google-analytics.com
127.0.0.1 *.google-analytics.com

This little "hack" keeps your computer from contacting Google's Analytics data collection servers, thus keeping your data out of Google's incredibly wealthy hands.

Thanks BlogBoing!

If you've got a web site or blog, you're probably using a statistics tracking service like StatCounter, SiteMeter or Google Analytics. Without a doubt, Google Analytics is the most comprehensive system around for tracking and analyzing visitor data for your website. But there are so many bells and whistles that it can be a bit intimidating.

Nonprofit consultant Beth Kantor has put together a great primer on Google Analytics. It's intended for nonprofits, but it's useful for anyone struggling to make sense of all the graphs and charts in Google Analytics.



If you already understand the value of an web analytics package, we'd recommend skipping ahead to the 2 minute mark, where Kantor begins to explain the five steps you should take before setting up your account.

Google Analytics is out of beta, in what may be record time for a Google product. The final version builds on some of the goodies first introduced last month, and includes changes suggested by folks like Search Engine Watch's Danny Sullivan and Marketing Pilgrim's Andy Beal.

As of July 18th, you'll no longer be able to access the previous version of Google Analytics.

So what's new?

• Hourly reporting - take a look at your visits/page views by daily or hourly report
• Clickable URLS - click through to the pages referenced in your reports
• Increased number of data rows per page
• Bounce rate increase and decrease colors were reversed (red now = bad, while green = good)
• AdWords integration

As usual, there are a bunch of other minor tweaks and changes that you can read about in the release notes.

[via Marketing Pilgrim]

If you're a blogger using WordPress, and you're looking for a good way to view both your web visitor statistics as well as your syndicated reader statistics, consider using Google Analytics and FeedBurner. Google Analytics, which was once known as Urchin, is a free and full-featured web statistic reporting package. FeedBurner is a best-of-breed syndicated feed monitoring service.

But once you've got both of those systems in place, you'll want an easy way to view your statistics, preferably right from your WordPress administration interface. And guess what? That's what this post is about. The accurately named Google Analytics and Feedburner Reports plugin for WordPress is exactly what you're looking for. Here's a list of features:

• Provides you with a birds-eye view of what's going on with your site
• Retrieves data from Google Analytics and Feedburner
• Reports are represented visually with graphs
• Choose the reports you want to view
• Ability to automatically install the Google Analytics tracking code for you, along with optional outbound link tracking.

The graphs are probably the sexiest part of this plugin, but ease of use is also high on the list of reasons you might want to try it out.

In this issue of Googleholic we cover:

• Google Map Search gadget
• Grannies and Google Coupons
• Google Music Trends
• Brazil sues Google
• Google Anniversary
• Writely is open for business
• China.com teams with Google

Welcome to Friday's Googleholic edition...