Which Web Statistics Package Would You Use?

ken-doh asks: "We host about 200 customers web sites on a Windows platform, we want to provide them with a simple web statistics package, to track hits and other useful pieces of information. We have been using Deepmetrix LiveStats XSP which has been perfect for our customers, but since Microsoft purchased it, the product is no more, with support ending next year. So we need to buy a new stats package. Any ideas?"

why fix it?

[networkBoy]

If it ain't broke keep using it ;)
or is that not an option for some reason?
-nB

It's a potential information leak, that's all

[pestie]

It's not that the links are inherently dangerous. The problem is that clicking such a link will take you to the site the link points to (obviously), and your browser will dutifully report your referrer to the remote server. And if your referrer looks something like "http://www.example.com/top-secret-stats-directory /awstats-referrers.html" then you've just given some unknown server a "back door" into your web stats, allowing them to gather intelligence about your site. In many cases that's unimportant - either the site is an inconsequential personal web page, or the directory is password protected, or you're smart enough to use something [stardrifter.org] to prevent your browser from sending referrer information. But as we all know, many people don't do what they should, and sometimes little data leaks like this can lead to compromises.

Re:Lies, damn lies, and statistics...

[nullchar]

Good point -- web stats can be amazingly useless. Don't read too much into them (oh gnos! I was crawled by wget!). And take the time to research what the numbers mean.

Webstats can be useful for showing broken links (Why so many 404s for this file? Oh crap, Sally renamed it). They can also point out commonly mising files (robots.txt, favicon.ico, sitemap.xml or whatever). Web stats can also be used for optimization -- seeing 4000 hits with only 30 visits might mean you are using way too many images. (So go back and change the fun-looking menu to text.)