So I was wondering if anyone uses Piwik on their server and if so do you think it’s better then [URL=“http://www.google.com/analytics/”]google analytics.
I was going to give it a go but from memory you need to incorporate a piece of code on every page and that put me off.
But If it’s on your server shouldn’t it be able to scan your sites and update it self. Thats how I image it would work.
It looks like it depends how your site is built as there are plugins for a lot of CMS’s, galleries and forums. My site is none of those and I would need to use the php class option with a piece of code on every page.
For me Google analytics & universal analytics is much better than any other software.
Why? A statement like that is not very helpful to anybody. Please explain your reasons for preferring Google Analytics.
Piwik is the only real alternative to Analytics in my opinion. I’ve used it for projects where using Analytics wasn’t an option for one reason or another.
It’s very good, but unless you have a reason not to use Analytics, use Analytics. There is no reason to introduce extra overhead unless you have a good reason.
Yes i have used Piwik and Analytics but according to me Analytics is better then Piwik it give details about all traffic and keywords of particular page.
I use piwik but google analytics still better in my opinion.
It would be better if you could expand a bit. You use piwik but still consider Google Analytics better. Why?
I don’t know piwik so I can’t have an input here but it would be useful for people like me if you could tell us the difference and why you still use piwik even when you think that Google Analytics is better.
It’s just more robust and better developed. I mean… it’s one of Google’s top services and one of the most important for their advertising business model. So right off the bat you’re comparing something with a small but very talented team to one of the flagship applications of one of the biggest and most respected software companies in the world.
It has a lot of extra features and is able to track more things, like Demographics. It’s also hosted by Google where as Piwik is actually pretty intensive for sites with over a few thousand hits a day. Piwik also requires a PHP/MySQL server, so if you’re like me and don’t usually run those then you need a second server or to configure PHP/MySQL on your server (which can sometimes cause issues). I’ve never attempted to install it on Nginx, so I don’t know if you would run into issues there or not.
I’m not a 4channer, but a recent real world instance is Moot (the owner of 4chan) was forced to switch away from Analytics (due to huge fees from Google for having so many hits) to something else and said Piwik wasn’t an option because would require multiple servers that would cost several thousand dollars to run. I’m not sure what they ended up choosing. Of course this is kind of extreme case with over 100million hits a day, but it definitely takes up resources on smaller sites.
But if data is sensitive or you have bosses that don’t trust hosting data on 3rd parties or you just want to host an open source option, Piwik is a pretty good solution and the next best thing from Analytics. It’s very good. Analytics is just better.
There are a few key differences between GA and Piwik. First of all GA is controlled by the corporation and hosted on Google’s servers, and Piwik is open source, free software that can be hosted on your infrastructure or you can use any of the vendors on the market that provide Piwik hosting.
Here are the reasons why you should consider using Piwik as opposed to GA:
1. Control over your own data
You maintain full control and ownership over all of your data. You can host Piwik on your own infrastructure, meaning your data is never shared outside of your organisation to third parties.
2. Piwik privacy features
Piwik takes privacy protection very seriously. It has several built-in features that help to comply with privacy regulations as well as implement industry best practices in this area.
The list includes:
- IP masking (we can mask one, two or three bytes of the IP address)
- Opt-out page (you can easily let users opt-out from tracking)
- DNT (you can respect Do Not Track header sent by browsers)
- Delete old logs and reports (if required by your data retention policy)
3. Access to individual visits - user centric reporting and no sampling
Piwik enables you to view and analyse the exact path of each individual visitor to your website. Most other analytics tools report only aggregate numbers and/or sampled data. Piwik provides detailed user reports to give you a better understanding of your visitors experience. You can integrate this data with data ware house, CRM or any other system.
4. Ability to extend and customise
Piwik is a platform that we can easily enhance with plugins - we can both extend and customise behaviour of existing features depending on your needs and requirements.
5. Vendor-indepencence
Piwik is an open source platform so you are not tied to a single vendor who sets the licensing rules and commercial terms.
6. Open source software transparency & community
Piwik is an open source software which means you have the ability to view every line of code and understand how certain functionalities are handled (implemented) by Piwik. It also provides full transparency over data tracking and constant improvements submitted from the Piwik community spread all over the world.
Some of the open source projects are not recognized by the business because of the lack or poor support. But it’s not the case with Piwik - you get a great support, cloud hosting and enterprise analytics consultancy from the creators of Piwik.org - see more at <snip> website.
Yeah I tried using the Piwik WordPress plugin but nothing happened and I wanted to or should I say still want to try it out on a site that I wouldn’t want to be connected to. Basically to see the type of traffic the site is pulling each day, without adding it to my Google webmaster tools/ Analytics.
I’ve downloaded it, mostly because I want to see what I can fix accessibility-wise. It’s a large project with a lot of stuff going on.
Like mawburn I’ve never had a machine with PHP/MySQL so this’ll be fun.
I figure I might as well add in Sphinx search and play with that too.
On a lighter vein, eventually you are mostly going to use an analytics program to find out how many hits you got from google, so why not use a product from google in the first place 
so why not use a product from google in the first place
…because you don’t get to own that data if it’s from google?
…because you only get the analysis of the data google chooses to offer you?
I can think of a few reasons one would want something other than google services to test their analytics. Or in conjunction with (like also using clicktale or similar services along with GA).