As a relative newbie to the blogosphere I thought it would be interesting to see what the more experienced bloggers with high traffic recommend for statistics, quoting Brett Tabke from a Successful Site in 12 Months with Google Alone: "Get a quality logger/tracker that can do justice to inbound referrals based on log files (don't use a lame graphic counter - you need the real deal). If your host doesn't support referrers, then back up and get a new host. You can't run a modern site without full referrals available 24x7x365 in real time."
So what are the options?
Most hosts and various web hosting control panels tend to offer free stats packages such as Webalizer and AWStats but do you find these adequate? Being more specific, "how many people came from Google 2 days ago when I blogged about that niche widget" or "how many referrals is the blogroll listing on site X really bringing in?"
Over the past year my package of choice has been Urchin, which was aquired by Google back in March this year. In my opinion it offers more granular viewing of stats over the previously mentioned free packages but this does come at a cost, with 'Urchin on Demand' costing $199 per month: according to a recent Bloggers Adsense Earnings Poll 49% of these bloggers earned less than $99 per month so it's unlikely your 'average' blogger would spend this sort of money.
Recently it seems more sites(blogs especially) are using hosted stats whereby tracking code is included on pages rather than working from raw server log files. Some popular packages include http://www.haveamint.com or http://www.sitemeter.com and those specifically targetting blogs like http://www.measuremap.com.
There are also various debates on which type of stats are more accurate, but what is the current weapon of choice for those 'A-listers' out there?
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