For some time now, I have been envious of the stat tracking service Dave uses (BlogBeat) since they closed down new sign-ups as soon as they were acquired by Feedburner.  Well all that has changed thanks to Feedburner. 

One of the many services Feedburner offers is Site Stats tracking.  First impression:  very very nice looking interface.  Quite a bit more polished than Icerocket's tracking app.  One thing that was a little odd, since it is Feedburner they are much more keyed on "burning your feed" etc.  But, if you just want to use their  Site Stats, you can still do so even if you don't use their feed burning-ness(?).  

[pictures will be coming, but I don't have the time right now so be patient :) ] 

Once you have signed up for your Feedburner account, you need to click on My Feeds and enter in the http://path to your site.  This will take you through a couple steps and eventually get you back to the dashboard.  

[there will be some pics here too, shh] 

In the dashboard you should see a section on the left nav for Site Stats.  There is a link to activate the stat tracking, and should give you a couple options on what to track.  I just chose them all to be safe :).  You will also see a drop down of different blogging apps that the script is configured to work with.  Go ahead and click on that to find out what your Feedburner identification (for this "feed") is.  

[yeah, pics] 

If you plan on using this for your InstantSpot site tracking and once you have the ID, click on the Tracking Script Manager and select the Feedburner option and simply paste your ID in that field.  (well, hit save also) 

If this service turns out to be just the exact same level of service that I have seen in Dave's Blogbeat tracker, then I think my search for a great (and free) stat tracker is over.

Basics:  I am still on the search for a good, free stat tracker.

Details: Let me start by saying the IceRocket guy(s) state clearly this tracker is a beta product.   (related posts: Another-free-stat-tracker , IceRocket-followup--Is-it-really-realtime )

The IceRocket tracker seemed, at first, to be the answer to my search for a free, real-time, reliable stat tracking service. At the time of my last post, their “Last Visits” section was real time and pretty cool to use and the rest of the stats sections updated every hour or so.

Something has changed since then. The “Last Visits” seems to be still working fine, I can see all of the Google search traffic coming in for example...but the rest of the stats aren't accurate or timely anymore. These new inconsistencies seemed to have cropped up after they fixed a problem with the “Last Visits” section not function for a couple days.

Moral of the Story: If you need to have accurate and trustworthy stats, don't use IceRocket yet...it seems like they are under active development (at least thats what I hope it is).

Not too long ago I made a switch back to Google Analytics (from MyBlogLog) and while Analytics is very feature-rich...it just isn't fast enough!  When I go to look at my statistics, I want to see up-to-the-minute data.  We are in the information age (or something like that) and we need info right now, not a few hours from now. 

Not to mention Dave's tracker (BlogBeat) really is real time and he gets all sorts of cool visitor info while I get to stare at stale, old and busted info.  (Unfortunately BlogBeat isn't accepting new registrations right now!)

Enter IceRocket's Tracker: Supposedly real-time stat tracking, and best of all free.  They pretty much cover all that you could want from a basic stat tracker.  So, we will see how IceRocket fares in my quest for my stat tracker.