If some TV station broadcasts advertisement-free program for a year, and then they introduce another free channel with advertisement and start charging for the first one, lot of people would surely be annoyed with this decision. But do they have right to feel that way?

As of Yugo, as I’m living in the country of its origin, I’m actually delighted you mentioned it, although I fail to understand what it has to do with free. Because of low labor, material and technology cost, this was a cheap low-quality car. The problem was that average USA citizen doesn’t need car that cheap, but in other parts of the world where average salary is under $50/mo, it’s the only car people can afford – it doesn’t matter if it requires to be pushed once in a while…

The problem is not with “free”. Networks still make money from “free” T.V. (The consumers cost is in the hardware and the delivery.) Money is still made with “free” radio.

The problem is with atrophied thinking and outmoded vision. The failure of adware was not one of model, it was one of overly blunt and intrusive design and poor execution. The Yugo did not do well in the market place. That does not mean that people reject CARS.

I’ll give you just 4 which have huge impact on the data you get:
1. Caching will always be a problem as your servers will not be able to report pages loaded from computer or server caches
2. No way to track returning visitors. You need cookies for that and code to read them
3. No way to track user interaction with elements on your website
4. No way to do ecommerce tracking and incredibly difficult to funnel processes and get real actionable data.

From a programmer point of view it might be useful to use log files instead of javascript type tracking, but from a business view that would be not that friendly. As for Google knowing too much about your website… well, he already knows with or without having Google Analytics in place. Maybe if you stop it from crawling your website you take care of that issue, but we all know nobody wants that.

> playing both positions to desperately expand a top-10 list.

I’m talking about both positions because I actually do “wear both hats”, as most other small company owners do. As of “desperation”, it doesn’t make much difference if there’s 10, 9, 5 or 15 reasons…

> Let’s break this down:

Please don’t assume that *we* have problem with changing code or building own tracking system. For this website, we have built a template engine that centralizes such modifications. But you also shouldn’t assume that all webmasters do the same, that they have enough resource and/or knowledge to build own tracking system or to hire professionals to do certain tasks for them.

I agree: using both methods is the best approach (as I did noted in one of previous posts), but I think it’s better to use log analyzer alone than JS solution alone.

@CraigB: Money-cost is similar for both methods, starting with $0 (there are also decent free/open source log analyzers available, and there are paid JS solutions).

Honestly, the correct solution would be a combination of both log analysis and JavaScript tagging.

Let’s break this down:

#1 — This is quite lazy. If you had foresight, it could also be auto generated within a view/template/rendering action.
#2 — It sounds that you’re really just not happy with Google’s performance– which can be resolved by running your own analysis service. Yes, it’s easier than you think.
#3 — Again, lazy. You’re arguing that its idiot-proof. Also, if you have the JavaScript-generated dataset, the administrator can run their own custom queries.
#4 — I’ll buy this. Though, with some webserver configuration, you can force requests be checked to ensure that the referral domain is legitimate.
#5 — This can be accomplished through JavaScript tagging as well.
#6 — I’ll buy this.
#7 — I’m sorry, but nothing is 100%. Log analysis’ biggest enemy is the web-cache. Only dynamic content is guaranteed to bust a caching strategy. You are potentially under-reporting the actual metrics by relying on only one source.
#8 — Maybe. This is a very passive/reactive approach, though. If security is that much of a concern, a specialist should be consulted.
#9 — I’ll buy this.
#10 — Again, this is resolved by running your own analysis service. Not all page-tagging solutions are Google operated.

I understand that you wrote a log analysis product, and would like to tout its benefits– but there’s no need to bend the truth to fit your agenda. Be straight with your readers.

Alas I was thinking more the open source type and not those limited to windows or which you have to pay for that said…

I will think on about what would make a solid web 2.0. Not like that means much as really who am I. But it sounds good.

> Its a shame the web log analysers havent been more maintained and updated for the web2.0 so to speak.

Some developers are still working. If you have any ideas to share, feel free to use Support link at the top of this page.