Best website statistics package?

goodminton asks: "As the webmaster for a small but growing e-commerce site, I'm becoming increasingly interested in the quality of our site metrics. We currently use a Javascript-based counter that provides good but basic information, however, a recent Slashdot posting has me thinking the stats from our system may not be as accurate as we'd like. What do you think is the best website statistics package, and why?"

Comments

AWStats

[GuruBuckaroo]

I just went through this process for my employer. While I like Google Analytics (and currently use it for my personal web pages), it's a bit more focused on e-commerce than I need - although that may be good for you.

What I decided on was http://awstats.sourceforge.net/. It's got a pretty impressive feature list, and I like the look, and the sheer volume of data it can collect.

One caveat - the current version (6.5) has a command-injection vulnerability when run in cgi mode (as opposed to statically-created pages), so watch where & how you install it.

Flawed does not mean worthless

[ChaosDiscord]

Just because the information you get is flawed doesn't mean the information is worthless. Most data is the real world is deeply flawed, and yet useful information can be extracted, useful trends determined. Sure, your log files will be skewed by who choses the participate (That is, who isn't caught by caches and proxies. If you're using Javascript, who is allowing the javascript in question). But any survey is skewed by those who chose to participate.

Throwing your hands up in the air and declaring that because you cannot be sure it's all garbage is foolishness. Know the limitations of your tools, accept the error, and take what you can get.