Since the beginning of WebNV I've always used AWStats to gather the statistics of my web site. It was standard and came free with my web host. Plus, it's easy to use and understand. It includes pretty much everything you need regarding your web site's stats. I could check my number of visits, visitors locale, length of visits, etc. So why would I try another stats program like Google's Analytics? Well, simply because I want to try something new, and I'm glad I did.

I've actually signed up and have been using Google Analytics for the past six or seven months. I never really liked it. It was just kind of bland and uninformative. I either want a stats program that just shows me the raw numbers or a very nice and very easy to use graphs and charts. The old Analytics didn't really do that for me, so I stuck with AWStats and barely ever checked Analytics. A good month or two went by without me logging into Google Analytics to check my stats, until I read about the new version that was just released.

I logged into Analytics with no big hopes, but was extremely happy with what I saw.

The new Flash interface is great. With easy navigation and readability this new version was a nice surprise. I can now easily check my daily page visits, as well as where these visits are coming from. I can see if they are coming directly, or from a search engine, or from a referring site. I can also see what region (country, state, city, etc.) my visitors are in. Pretty interesting stuff to see where the majority of my visitors are located. I can also check out my most popular pages/articles. There are also some stats I really like that were not included in AWStats like visitors' screen resolutions, Flash versions, and if they had Javascript enabled or not.

I've been using Analytics now for a week or two and haven't even gone back to check on AWStats. It's really not as good, or pretty, as Google's new stats are. If you have a web site and want to check out your site stats, then sign up with Google Analytics and enjoy.