Google Analytics’ new weekly and monthly graphing is a wonderful enhancement. We find that monthly graphs usually smooth the data too much and should be avoid, however the weekly graphing enhances the understanding of trends even on sites with relatively even daily traffic.

Google Analytics is not exactly a real-time service. Numbers filter in from a variety of sources and then when everything is in end-of-day processing is done and the numbers are finalized. However, this can happen much later than you think… This article tells you a quick way to know if the data have been finalized.

It’s weird to see traffic from a site that no longer exists in your web analytics reports, but that actually is the sign of a good analytics package and a good site. This happens because the users who were referred by the site keep coming back and the original referrer keeps getting the credit for the traffic.

As I found this morning, Google Analytics has been down for about two days. More precisely the data for the past two days is missing - the interface is working pretty normally otherwise. Other people are reporting all sorts of weird problems over the past few weeks (and particularly now) - everything from all their [...]

Microsoft has announced its web analytics package - Gatineau. But the question is whether they will be as good as Google and the paid services at protecting the privacy of the data.