Review: WebTrends Log Analyzer 4.0

WebTrends Log Analyzer has evolved over the past year or two into a powerful desktop tool. Since the websites I want to study are on a remote Web hosting service (usually Unix operating systems), I can download the raw access log file automatically using WebTrends' internal FTP facility. Then WebTrends analyzes the data and can store it (if desired) for later analysis in a proprietary database. Data sorting and analysis can take several minutes or more, depending upon the size of the traffic log. When analysis is complete, the program produces a detailed standard report with graphs in your choice of Microsoft Word, Excel, HTML, or ASCII text formats. The reports can be configured to your particular needs, and data can be filtered to exclude unwanted log entries. You can filter by return code, user domain, directory, files accessed, and referrer to hone in on specialized research questions.

While about 20 standard analyses are available, for marketing analysis I found these particularly valuable: most requested pages, top entry pages, top exit pages, top paths through site, most accessed directories, top referring sites, top referring URLs, top search engines, top search keywords by engine, and most used browsers (with version numbers).

For small to medium websites, WebTrends will be quite adequate, and is moderately priced at $299. I recommend it.

You can download a demo version at the WebTrends site.