I of course met up with Eric Enge in San Jose at the latest Search Engine Strategies – where he presented the final research report of his 2007 Web Analytics Shootout. The report is, according to Eric, an evaluation of the performance, accuracy, and capabilities of 7 different analytics packages as implemented across 4 different sites. (If you find this stuff interesting, you should definitely read the 2. part about analysis of JavaScript placement and how it matters, as well as a qualitative reviews of the analytics tools.

2007 Web Analytics Shootout Goals

1. Evaluate ease of implementation
2. Evaluate ease of use
3. Understand the basic capabilities of each package
4. Solve specific problems on each web site
5. Discover the unique strengths of each package
6. Discover the unique weaknesses of each package
7. Learn about the structural technology elements of each package that affect its capabilities
8. Learn how to better match a customer’s needs to the right analytics package

2007 Web Analytics Shootout Vendors

• Clicktracks
• Google Analytics
• IndexTools
• Unica Affinium NetInsight
• Visual Sciences’ HBX Analytics
• Omniture SiteCatalyst
• WebTrends

2007 Web Analytics Shootout Additional Contributors

• John Biundo of Stone Temple Consulting
• Jonah Stein of Alchemist Media
• Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz
• John Marshall of Market Motive
• Dennis R. Mortensen of IndexTools
• Jim Sterne of Target Marketing

I am of course somewhat biased (being one of the vendors and at the same time one of the additional contributors) – so this is what my good friend Jim Sterne had to say:

“In this updated 2007 Analytics Shoot Out, Stone Temple Consulting takes the same approach of head-to-head comparisons of major web analytics packages on real websites. Yes, they evaluate things like ease of implementation, use, and reporting. Yes, they look at the strengths and weaknesses of each package. But then they dig deeper into the conundrum of accuracy in web analytics data and discuss where accuracy matters. They look harder at first-party versus third-party cookies. They measure how does JavaScript placement on the web page affect the resulting data? They also get practical, identifying which analytics tools are best for which types of websites. Are you trying to compare and contrast the different tools out there? This is a great resource.”

Other blog comments:

• Stone Temple Consulting Publishes Web Analytics Shootout Results (SEW)
• Web Analytics Shootout by Stone Temple Consulting (web analytics world)
• 2007 Web Analytics Shootout - Final Report (shaving Occam)
• 2007 Web Analytics Shootout - Will the Real Web Analytics Provider Please Stand Up? (Enquiro)
• Eric Enge Finalizes 2007 Web Analytics Shootout (SEO Scoop)