I just noticed on the pMetrics blog that they are releasing an update soon that will fix the issue of only being able to select a single day as well as adding an API and logging of custom data.  This is great news and will constitute a HUGE improvement.  next on the list is adding export functionality and a more robust reporting interface in my opinion...but I'm excited to get the dynamic date range selector and API access!

I wrote a blog several weeks ago about some of the measurement tools available for measuring blog activity, and at the same time installed several tags from some of the providers in order to compare there relative performance. Now I will not try to compare the actual numbers since it's not only an exercise in futility since all tools use slightly different algorithms and business rules...but also because I don't care about that. I want to know which is the best tool currently available for measuring blog usage and for looking into the harder to find details such as inbound and outbound links, cross promotion, etc... So here are some brief results and opinions.

Measure Map - It's still not available, while I have been given assurances from a trusted and well informed source that it is not dead...but that's the only thing I've heard and their site is still unchanged. It's especially interesting since Jeff Veen who came over from Adaptive Path with the Measure Map purchase doesn't seem to be working on it either...at least the fourth paragraph of his blog post says he's not...

StandardStats - StandardStats and TotalStats are pretty much worthless in my opinion unless you post minimally to your blog and don't really want to look at web analytics. It seems to have problems if the "www" is omitted from the URL(thus creating two entries, one for www.myblog.com/content and one for myblog.com/content), so you have to do the math of combining them, which not only is complex since you can't export the data to excel, but it also muddies your topten list...which is the only display you get with the free version. Basically you should avoid this tool and use one of the other free versions.

pMetrics - While it has some great features as far as looking into the inbound and outbound links, intelligent content viewing unlike standard stats, and a host of other interesting tid-bits...it suffers greatly from poor usability and data manipulation. You can only view data one day at a time, and not only was that a terrible TV series...but it's a huge hindrance when you're trying to look at the activity on a certain blog post... One really cool option is looking at visitors on a Google map with full ajax integration, but google analytics has that too and it allows you to customize your date range.

Google Analytics - While it is decidely NOT a blog analytics tool, the new UI borrowed from Measure Map (did I mention that I want Measure Map?) is quite brilliant and easy to use. It provides a wealth of data but it still lacks the true blog measurability since it's orientation is more focused on standard websites.

So the end result is that we're still stuck using tools that don't fit the problem and no clear time line of when tools like Measure Map will be available.

I recently posted a laundry list of potential blog analytics tools and decided to implement a few solutions on our blog to see how they were in action. While this process is still going on I ran into an interesting thread on Robert Scoble's blog. The discussion is similar but it's looking at Alexa, compete.com and several other general stats providers and asking why they're so horrible. After reading through a lot of comments I realized that there are three issues here that are being lumped together, and in so doing, it's creating more confusion.

1. General Stats - The Alexas of the web will always be off based on their methodologies using panel or toolbar data. the only way to shore it up is to create a better system that can prevent cheating...but this isn't going to happen soon.

2. Web Analytics - Obviously in this case there are a host of competitors ranging from free to really expensive and also varying wildly in their offering. This category is the definitive source to track everything going on at your local server...but it's not going to solve the bloggers dilemma. And it's hard to get two systems to say the same number...but at the end of the day it doesn't matter since you're looking for trending and directional information for the most part.

3. Blog Analytics - I recently did a post on my blog about the complete void within the blog analytics space...since that post I've heard that Google will be releasing Measure Map, a blog specific tool that seems quite powerful and takes a step beyond the current web analytics tools out there. The measure map UI was lifted for the new version of Google Analytics and is quite slick.

More to come next week on a comparison of pMetrics (terrible name) and StandardStats which have both been implemented on our blog.

Since I'm an analyst by trade I started thinking more about measuring our blog's impact given our renewed focus on contributing more. I was initially surprised to see that last year Google had bought MeasureMap, one of the more interesting tools. However, 14 months later it remains a closed beta and has no recent info. In spite of this early setback I powered on to compile a list of the tools out there and a brief description of each.

MeasureMap - Google

- While it looks interesting and very Google-ish based on the screenshots, it's still in a closed beta and shows no signs of life right now.

StandardStats - Feedburner

- This used to be blogbeat, now it's split into a standard version which is free if you use feedburner, and it includes simple analytics. With a paid upgrade you get TotalStats, which is far more robust if you're willing to spend.

pMetrics - Performancing

- The free version is available to sites with less than 1K pageviews per day, but it does lack the power of the premium version, which is a very reasonable $15 per year. This is a very full-featured tool with a simple and intuitive web interface. Their demo is the actual stats for their site and they're live!

Mint - Shaun Inman

- A decently robust web analytics tool with some blog tracking built in, but this is more of a pretty face than a work horse. $30 per site.

BlogPulse - Nielsen

- This is a free service that can show general trends, much like Google Blog Search, but it has charts too.

Google Blog Search - Google

- This is a free service that can show general trends.

Technorati

- This is a free service that can show general trends and rankings for blogs.

What this shows is that the space is still pretty wide open, there are no clear leaders and most are probably waiting in fear for Google to deploy MeasureMap, which may or may not happen. But given the influence Google Analytics has had in the web analytics space they have reason to be scared of MeasureMap.

In the end I have come to the conclusion that pMetrics looks like the most bang for the buck... and it's the tool I want to deploy on this blog. Check back for updates on how it went and how it works.