Website Analytics tool has become an important service over the internet. Every publisher or advertiser is looking for a state-of-art website analytics tool for their website. Website Analytics tools can be classified as:

  1. Website Analytics Hosted Service
  2. Website Analytics Software Service
  3. Real Time Website Analytics Service

The most preferred of the aforementioned is the hosted services, followed by software services. The only reason to be cited is “Time”. In hosted service, the website analytics company takes care of hosting the website traffic data and resources,  thus helping the client save time and make data available almost immediately for analysis.

Most of the analytic tools guarantee to authentically capture all the traffic data. But the underlying fact is an approximate deviation of 10% is preferentially considered as the difference in the actual and reported traffic data. A website analytics expert is likely to bank on the 90% data accuracy provided by analytics tool.

Comparison of analytics tools:

Analytics
Tool
Google Analytics WebTrends Omniture ClickTracks
Features
Quick Implementation Yes No No No
Traffic Comparison Yes No Yes No
Traffic Timestamps No No No No
Paid Search Tracking Yes Yes Yes Yes
eCommerce Tracking Yes Yes Yes Yes
GeoTargeting Yes Yes Yes Yes
Map Overlay Yes Yes Yes Yes
Funnel Tracking Yes Yes Yes Yes
Custom Reports Yes Yes Yes Yes
Email Reports Yes No No No
Guaranteed Accuracy 85% 90% 85% 85%
Real-Time Data No No No No

Real Time Traffic Capture & Traffic Timestamp analysis is of utmost importance for micro-managing, immediate campaign adjustments and tweaks. The data’s is utilized and analyzed by a marketer in the field of Search Engine Marketing to optimize the campaign by adjusting daily budget and cpc (cost per click).

Most of the Search Engine Marketing companies prefer to have their own Analytics tool to measure Real Time Traffic, Data and Timestamps to achieve their campaign ROI.

Enumerated resources I would recommend:

List of Online Traffic Analytic Tools
http://mashable.com/2009/01/12/track-online-traffic/

Web Data Resource & Vendor Comparison by Brian Clifton
http://www.advanced-web-metrics.com/docs/web-data-sources.pdf