After my recent huge post on SEO tools was published, I promised to add the section for free online internal analytics services; but before that I decided to discuss different aspects of the topic starting with effective tracking of your backlinks and referrals. The 4 tools I’ll be reviewing here include:
| Options/ Analytics | Site Meter | Hittail | Google Analytics | Get Clicky |
| Sorting options | no | no | yes | yes |
| Filtering options | no | yes | yes | yes |
| Export results | no | yes | yes | yes |
| Traffic stats per referer | no | no | yes | yes |
| Multiple domains per account | no | yes | yes | yes |
Now a few words about each of them:
Sitemeter provides a partial report of your site recent referrals.
Benefits: the service is free and extremely easy to install and use.
Drawbacks: no sorting options; mixed up search referrals and site referrals; no export option; public stats for free users; one domain per account.
Hittail – while the service is primarily meant for long tail tracking, it does provide information on recent referrals under "Search Hits" tab.
Benefits: find the exact date and time when the link was clicked to bring a surfer to your site; export data to Excel; delete any referrals you don’t want to see; track more than one domain per account.
Drawbacks: limited sorting and filtering options; no traffic stats for each referral.
Google Analytics does have powerful features allowing you to track your visitors’ behavior but rather weak backlink-tracking options.
Benefits: see traffic stats (people count, time on site, bounce rate, pages per visit, % of new visits) for every referral; play with multiple powerful sorting options.
Drawbacks: no direct link to the referring page for less powerful referrals (I recall there’s some hack to remedy that but I can’t find the link; so if you know it, please comment).
GetClicky offers a most convenient blogger-oriented solution for tracking (especially newest) backlinks.
Benefits: get updated of most recent links; newest unique links and backlinking domains; set date range and see how the links performed over time.
Drawback: 100,000 daily page views limit
Possible you were looking for this http://www.reubenyau.com/google-analytics-hack-obtaining-full-referring-url/
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Wow, getclicky looks great and their rates are really affordable. I feel a bit trapped since I use Webstat and have no way to transition my data from one service to another.
Cheers,
Mendy
GetClicky’s looking great – anybody know of any major drawbacks…
Using GetClickey fro the last 4 months. No major drawback…
Hi Ann,
I read your many articles. I read and learning more knowledge. I want some information, I know google analytics because already I have been using google analytics. So, are the 4 tools only there? Is any other tools there? Really I proud of your work and I want to be more SEO knowledge from Your articles.
What is the uses of Sitemeter for us? Because it allows one domain per account. Most people don’t want this tool.
Thanks Gabriel.
Google Analytics with the hack is working well for us and seems to improve every month.
Other than checking competitors’ backlinks, what do you use to find backlink opportunities?
Thanks Ann for this post, personally I have been using Google Analytics to track my page visitors but from your comparison chat it seems Get Clicky has an added feature of tracking backlinks.
I wonder if there is any harm in using both Get Clicky and Google Analytics both at the same time?
Ahhh, Peter beat me to the Rueben Yau link dropping :-)
Great article Ann, it’s nice to see pros and cons for each tool
@Joseph@SEO : no harm at all, not that I know about.
@ Ann, what about the “external links” in Google Webmaster Tools?
i think, external links menu in Google webmaster tools very usually but i need, unique domain links
Thanks for the info, I’ll have to take a closer look at GetClicky…
hai great stuff this info is worth for webmasters
its a great tool to your back links.keep posting more content.great stuff
Getclicky is great!! There some options i miss though.
Cannot add filter to lists (i.e IP address etc) Ure just able to filer on a specific value. I want to be able to see all visitor’s ip:s in the “Visitors”-tab
Then you cannot get info about seraches if they are organic or PPC. Major drawback!!!
Hey Ann,
Is there any tool where I can get the competitors Inbound links i.e from where they are getting back links.
-Pandiyan G