I heard about this post from Manoj Jasra today and it's pretty interesting - I can imagine all the work he put into finding the varied posts and articles listed on Web Analytics package comparisons.

Consider this - some people found Google Analytics, a free package, more accurate than Omniture Site Catalyst.  I have a hard time believing that - but since each package counts raw logfiles differently I suppose you have to decide with version of data your going to follow.  The numbers you get are going to vary depending on how the product is implemented and which pages are tagged, etc). For example:

"…Google on the other hand has not been giving me bad data like this. Now keep in mind we just got all our pages added with the Google analytics code, or at least we think we have. Speculation still exists because Google consistently gives us lower numbers than Site Catalyst for everything, but at least the numbers have been consistent. Here is our Google data."

Comparing NetTracker to Google Analytics - turns out neither is perfect but we are in this thing called "Web Analytics" to segment visitors - and NetTracker does that much better, and more in depth than Google Analytics - so that' the determiner in this case.

"….What Google Analytics has going for it:

• It’s free!
• Integration with AdWords
• Good set of standard reports
• Easily isolates Paid vs Unpaid Search Traffic
• Good keyword reports - tied to conversion
• Provided as an online service - so no server logs to worry about.
• Pretty

What NetTracker has going for it:

• Incredible drill down capability. You can drill into every individual visit and every individual click stream. I mentioned in a previous post to never trust your analytics. With NetTracker you drill down into the details and look for patterns of strange visitation data. I can’t tell you how often this ability helped me solve mysteries in visit data.
• The ability to filter any data by a huge variety of variables on on the fly or in a custom report. For instance, I could produce a report for all visitors who reached a page that:
  • URL matched a particular pattern
  • Referred to from a particular engine
  • With a partial match on dynamic parameter
  • Entry page matched a particular pattern

This level of detail allows me to segment and aggregate all different types of visits."

Manoj Jasra has done a pretty good job of collecting the information on each product - the only thing I'd say… some of these reviews are a couple of years old…comparisons made for products 3 years ago might not apply anymore.. maybe whatever problem or limitation someone had with NetTracker in 2004 is fixed now… I don't know, but that's my guess.