Piwik - Ever try it?

[Guard Dog]

I just got notice (in Piwik) to update and really like some of the changes (even though many were cosmetic or under the hood). I converted from Google Analytics for the simple fact that it was too cumbersome and difficult to navigate and find what I wanted. Maybe I'm slow, but I found Google Analytics to be way overcomplicated - probably great for adwords and other campaign-style PPC.

Anyway.... here are some images on why I like Piwik. Their URL, btw, is: piwik.org

Key to our industry - Outclicks
I love this display. It shows me what affiliate programs were clicked on and I don't have to do anything in my code to get this report. It's a cool way to check on stats, IMO, and to see where your visitors are going.



Visitor Log - One of my favorite pages
I'm obsessed with this page. I refresh it way too often, but I like it's information (excepting Google no longer reporting keywords)



Visitor Overview
This is another nice look into your stats and the various important metrics such as bouncerate, visits, uniques, etc.



Visitor Page Titles
I like knowing all the pages visited and this does a good job showing me that information in a nice format.




Setting Goals
This handy little feature allows you to set and track goals (like how many outclicks to a specific affiliate program)



On top of all this there is a plugin system and an API. This is self-hosted, frequently updated (and allows auto-update via link when a newer version is out).

I can't say enough about Piwik... Now - if only it could increase my web presence

 

[mattsgame]

Been using it for a few months and so far I am impressed. It gave me way more information than Analytic and was so easy to install and get running on a sub domain (just did mine via Softaculous) Have not updated it yet though but looks good

 

[Online18Casino]

I will have to try that out on one of my sites.. I check my GA stats way less then I should, mainly due to it feeling like a hassle to navigate through.

 

[Viriatu]

i am using this CG! i think its cool im not big on reading the manual i set up some goals and been running for almost one month and i think it works great the new look made it more slick but still works like it should and was easy to update. also most themes pro in WP now bring slots to put this code and its a simple thing to do... i was thinking this could help with "keyword not defined" but still i see nothing...

 

[Guard Dog]

i was thinking this could help with "keyword not defined" but still i see nothing...

From what I understand, this is more of a 'Google protecting privacy' thing than anything else. If you are logged in and click an URL after searching,the keywords are not available for Piwik, Google Analytics, or any other program. It's all for user privacy, from what I have read - but sucks for us.

 

[Viriatu]

From what I understand, this is more of a 'Google protecting privacy' thing than anything else. If you are logged in and click an URL after searching,the keywords are not available for Piwik, Google Analytics, or any other program. It's all for user privacy, from what I have read - but sucks for us.

This is a power move, you know this as i do also, a company that does says THIS, cant be to concerned about privacy.... its all a oax in the end, google revealed itself as more evil than i could ever imagine, they punish a scrapper site, but they are biggest scrapper site in the internet, copy our shit and make money off it, and when they dominate the market they serve a giant shit sandwich we all have to take a bite, its fucking moronic...

 

[Vladi]

i was thinking this could help with "keyword not defined" but still i see nothing...

Nothing will help with keyword not defined because it is impossible to do anything about it. Previously when you clicked a search result the request made to your site contained the google search keywords in the referrer part of the header. So your analytics package could read that referrer header and record the keywords that were used in the search. But now google has changed to default HTTPS searches there is no keyword information sent with the request. Therefore no analytics package, google or otherwise, can get that information. It is gone for good.

I place my personal privacy above the needs of unknown marketers and webmasters so I am happy with that and prefer it as it is now. I can't really see why there's so much "waaah" about the whole thing. But it is a typical response from so many webmasters that seem to think that Google owes them something. If you want to see the keywords searched just look in your Google webmaster tools account, its all in there.

 

[Viriatu]

I place my personal privacy above the needs of unknown marketers and webmasters so I am happy with that and prefer it as it is now. I can't really see why there's so much "waaah" about the whole thing. But it is a typical response from so many webmasters that seem to think that Google owes them something.

First point Vlad - because they use https you privacy is still being raped, this is only in place to fuck us from targeting keywords and facilitate googles work on spam.

Second point - google is a scrapper site, without yuo and me and millions like us google would be shit living on a basement in Palo Alto.... so ye i think google owes me and you a shit load of money among other things, they should pay to scrap my content and not make money with it.

But of course this is my simpleton opinion....

 

[Vladi]

First point Vlad - because they use https you privacy is still being raped, this is only in place to fuck us from targeting keywords and facilitate googles work on spam.

That makes no sense at all. As a web user I am very happy that my searches are encrypted and not passed on to anonymous marketers and webmasters, other than the aggregate information that you can get in webmaster tools. Under the old system every server in between google and the website you click through to could record the query used and re-sell it. I think that this is a good compromise. How does that mean my privacy is being "raped"?

If you're upset that it is harder to "target keywords" then Google is probably happy because they want people to write useful content for other people rather than an attempt to game the algorithm. If this makes it harder to do, which I don't believe it does (again just use GWT), then they are achieving their aims.

When you say "facilitates googles work on spam", I'm not sure exactly what you mean. But if you mean Google's efforts to curb spam then I am wondering why that makes you angry. I applaud efforts to recognise and eliminate spam, especially the shitty information-free thin sites that probably account for over 90% of affiliate websites these days. If Google could better recognise and eliminate such rubbish then the minority of us that have useful and informative affiliate sites would be far better off.

Second point - google is a scrapper site, without yuo and me and millions like us google would be shit living on a basement in Palo Alto.... so ye i think google owes me and you a shit load of money among other things, they should pay to scrap my content and not make money with it.

I still disagree. Without you or me Google would still have eleventy-billion other web pages to index, and if not them it would have been Bing or Yahoo or Alta Vista or another search engine. People aren't going to stop making websites just because they don't like the search engines. If you put something on the web without some kind of barrier like a password it is there in public for anyone to read. If you don't want Google to index or scrape your site then block their crawler using robots.txt and they will honour it, stop crawling and eventually de-index it. I doubt you're going to do that though, because you want Google to send you traffic even if you don't like the way they send it. They ARE paying you - in referred traffic. You can't have it both ways.

Contrast this with something like Ahrefs or Majestic SEO or Seomoz which scrape and buy information about your sites, ignore robots.txt, and re-sell it to anyone who pays. They even charge you money to see information about your own site. And in return, they give you nothing unless you pay. That is far more of a concern for me than a search engine. I am hopeful that encrypted searches will make sites like those even a little bit less useful for my competitors.

 

[Viriatu]

Contrast this with something like Ahrefs or Majestic SEO or Seomoz which scrape and buy information about your sites, ignore robots.txt, and re-sell it to anyone who pays. They even charge you money to see information about your own site. And in return, they give you nothing unless you pay. That is far more of a concern for me than a search engine. I am hopeful that encrypted searches will make sites like those even a little bit less useful for my competitors.

that your totally right!

well i must say you make good points, but when i see ads target at my email titles, in my g inbox, im still thinking google is ok with fucking our privacy as long they are doing the spam or sale. and its good to curb spam, but not at expense of making us blind to user trends...

 

[muffincrumbs]

Why share info that you can sell says the people who own Google stock. Remember that they are in the business of organizing the worlds content, not providing a search engine. Perhaps using an organic search model will be outdated in the near future, or maybe something else seemingly impossible now. Either way they are doing this for their own financial interests and could care less about providing the best possible results.... Because you can not with the current environment.

Think about this, if an artificial intelligence could read a web page and truly determain all of the possible uses of that content, there would be no need to apply math, aka algorithms, to take spam out of the equation. A brave new world of "May the best and most engaging content wins over a high advertising budget".

 

[Vladi]

Think about this, if an artificial intelligence could read a web page and truly determain all of the possible uses of that content, there would be no need to apply math, aka algorithms, to take spam out of the equation. A brave new world of "May the best and most engaging content wins over a high advertising budget".

That is exactly what Google and other search engines are trying to do. The algorithm is the math and it is the artificial intelligence. At least where Google is concerned they also employ thousands of people that check the quality of search results as the algorithm changes. So the machine based algorithm gets human feedback. I can't think of a better way to do it. Perhaps you can and if so I recommend you create your better search engine than Google. The reason Google is #1 is because it gave people better results at a time when other engines like Alta Vista were completely shit and overrun by spam. It is clearly nowhere near perfect but as time passes it gets better. Then humans work out how to exploit it and they have to change it to make it better all over again. And then webmasters get upset when their site ranking changes like they have some right to a high placement in perpetuity. Its a never ending vicious cycle and I don't really see the point of complaining about it and expecting the search engines to do you favours. It is after all the human blackhats and spammers that make the job orders of magnitude more difficult for Google and the rest.