Tech Master Guide

When you put up your Web site for the first time, it’s easy enough. You’re kind of liking this new-fangled Internet thing. The site starts to get a bit bigger over time.

Now you are up to your ears in advertising requests, tracking information and page comments. You need some free information and help fast. This list of 100 free tools to track everything on your Web site will get you though until you can get an IT guy on the phone.

Web Site Statistics and Counters

1. RiteCounter - While Ritecounter has a visitor counter, it’s the extras that put it over the top. Track hits to individual pages on your site, enjoy the free IP tracker, and enjoy other valuable tools and features.
2. GoStats - GoStatis is a free Web hit counter that more than exceeds the value of its price tag. Quickly check out page views, determine your returning visitors, gauge your page popularity, and more.
3.Browser Statistics - If you’re feeling out of step with what kids are doing on the interwebs these days, this program helps keep you up to date. It lets you know what browsers, operating systems, screen resolutions, and Javascript people are using these days, so your site won’t be too far behind (or too far ahead) of the times.
4.Who’s.Amung.Us - This site provides a simple code that you add into your site, and requires no registration. With the code, you’re tracking visitors numbers and locations, peak traffic times, and more.
5.Histats - Get your statistics in monthly, daily, or even hourly format with this tool. You’ll get stats for every page, a click counter service, visitor path tracking, and more.
6. Tracewatch - Choose between PHP tracking or Java tracking with this cool tool. You’ll also get a web-based panel with which to scope out the real-time visitor tracking info.
7. eWebCounter - Keep track of visitors visibly or invisibly with this simple program. Also, get reports of visitor statistics e-mailed directly to you.
8. Statcounter - Invisible and incredibly accurate, Statcounter is like a slightly less lethal ninja. It tracks your hits, keeps track of web stats, gives you real-time statistics, and more.
9. FireStats - This program is primarily tooled to non-commercial users. Use it to track referrers, OS trees, search engine keywords, and more.
10. Compete - How much of the entire Internet have you captivated on any given day? This tool measures how many people have visited your site that day—out of everyone on the Internet.
11. Visitors - A super fast web log analyzer, this tool works for Windows, Linux, and various Unix-like systems. It outputs the statistics from your web server log file into a variety of reports, and requires no installation whatsoever.
12. Stat24 - It’s all about 24-hour info with this slick program. Get professional statistics, web counters, web promotion and graphical maps of visitor clicks, all in one package.
13. Active Meter - Designed around visitors and not just visits, this tracking tool goes the extra mile for you. Track multiple Web sites with a single account, enjoy invisible trackers, and get all of the info you need to keep those visitors returning.
14. SiteMeter - This provides visitor info in a down-and-dirty, no-frills manner. Get page view averages, lengths of user visits, total counters and daily counters, and more.
15. OneStatFree - Sometimes the simple things really are the best. This tool lets you see which days and times are most active for your site, how its performance compares to others, the browsers your visitors use, and more.
16. FreeStats - Getting web browser access and a customizable dashboard is just the tip of the iceberg with the cool program. You also get detailed statistics and around the clock information.
17. GoldStats - What makes this program Golden? Live reports, detailed visitor information and search engine keyword reports.
18. Stat08 - It’s hard to even list all of the features that you get with this free tool. External referrer statistics, search keyword adjustments, visitor statistics (including geography and system information) and more.
19. CQ Counter - Would you like an ad-free, server installation-free web counter? With CQ, you can track which search engines bring you the most folks, how often your pages are reloaded, site hits, and much more.
20. eXTReME Tracking - What makes this tracking so extreme? You get basic tracking, geo tracking, system tracking, and referrer tracking.
21. BBClone - Designed as “a PHP based Web Counter on Steroids,” this tool lets you go beyond the number of visitors. For your visitors, you can get IP addresses, browsers, the order that the visitor viewed pages in, and more.
22. Webstats Basic - This simple program has a little of everything. It allows you to observe visitors and trends, monitor your site traffic, and export reports of your site in a variety of formats.

Surveys, Blog Tools and Web Site Communication Gadgets

23. Feedburner - Here’s one for the bloggers out there. This tool lets you turn your blog into an RSS feed for those dedicated readers, track who’s subscribing to your wisdom, and even track what your most popular posts are.
24. Woopra - This tool is great if you want more communication with visitors on your site. In addition to tracking tools, Woopra includes a chat tool, letting you communicate to visitors via handy pop-ups.
25. Addfree Stats - Need free statistics for your visitors? Track and display your hits, poll your visitors, and even view the data on your mobile device.
26. BlogTracker - This is a great, ad-free way of keeping track of your blog visitors. You’ll get visitor counts and other statistics in a sweet, hassle-free format.
27. Enquisite - Here’s your go-to program for search engine traffic data. Track regular searches and paid search engine clicks, and become an expert on drawing more visitors to your site.
28. 4Q - Take a tip from Family Feud and use 4Q to learn what the survey says. This tool helps you design polls for your visitors, and get more detailed feedback beyond the simple fact that they came to the site.
29. Google Banned Checker -A quickie tool to check if your domain name has been banned by Google.
30. ClickTale - Sometimes Big Brother watching isn’t such a bad thing. With ClickTale, you can record and view visitors’ actions on your site from their perspective, allowing you to better customize your site to fix problems people may be having.
31. Clicky - Clicky is another great tool for bloggers everywhere. It provides an easy-to-read dashboard, Twitter keyboard monitoring, in-depth visitor analysis, and more.
32. Snoop - Interfacing between your computer and your site, Snoop ensures that you don’t miss a thing. Be notified of comments, purchases, referrals and more with simple audio alerts.
33. MyBlogLog - If your blog and Facebook had a love child, it might look a lot like this program. You can effectively create an entire online community around your blog, as other bloggers running the program can visually see that you’ve visited, leave comments, and more.
34. Mochibot - If you use a lot of Flash on your site, then this program is ideal for you. It helps you track the popularity of your Flash games and animations, gauge viral Flash ad campaigns effectively, helps incorporate Flash into your blogging, and more.
35. Alexa - How does your Web site rank? Use Alexa to check out site ratings, hot URLs, and cool blogs.
36. The Alexa Toolbar for Internet Explorer - Extend your Alexa experience right into your browser. Get the real skinny on the sites you’re visiting, check out the real-time related links, and other sweet features.
37. Webtrack - Get e-mails or SMS messages when your site goes down or when visitor trends change with this cool program. You’ll also enjoy slick graphical statistics and lots of great visitor info.
38. dnScoop - Should you stay or should you sell now? This site estimates the value of your domain name, and also lets you scope out the prices of great domain names on the market.
39. Feed Analysis - This blog-friendly app is designed to complement Feedburner. It uses Feedburner info to provide interactive charts and more in-depth analysis.
40. SongKicker - Got a Web site for your band? Use this quirky app to sound the electronic depths for your Amazon sales and Internet gossip about you to gauge how hot you and your tunes are.
41. Reciprocal Link Check - Link partners are a great way of expanding your presence all across this series of tubes. To make sure your partners are still linking back to your site use this handy tool.
42. Google Adsense Preview - Google ads are a great way to increase your Web site revenue…if they’re doing their job, that is. This site lets you sample the ads that Google’s Adsense has picked out for you.
43. Google Adsense Calculator - Speaking of Adsense, is it properly paying out in cents (and dollars)? This tool helps you predict earnings changes relating to Impressions, Click Rate, and Cost Per Click.
44. List Cleaner - If your site or blog has a lot of lists, here’s your chance to clean them. This simple too removes duplicates from any list you give it, ensuring that your Top 100 isn’t more like a Top 80-something.
45. Nuconomy - Even though the economy’s in the gutter, the Nuconomy is looking good. This tool goes beyond page views to see just how actively engaged your users are with the site, allowing you to make it even greater.
46. YSlow - This Firefox extension helps you measure your front-end effectiveness. You’ll get a letter grade on your design and an outline of possible areas you can improve on.

Technical Web Site Stuff for Smart People

47. Web Page Analyzer - It’s all about file sizes and connection speeds with this simple, awesome program. Discover how quickly your site loads at different speeds, find the combined file size of all items on your page, and trim your sites down accordingly.
48. Grape - Free and open source, there’s a lot of room in this program for exploration and expansion. Get fluid statistics, API extensions, and more.
49. W3C CSS Validation Service - While the name may be a mouthful, it can be described in just two syllables: awesome. Analyze the different CSS templates you used in your Web sites and make sure it meets W3C recommendations which, among other things, means that multiple browsers can read it just fine.
50. Netcraft - Who watches the watch…er, the server? Actually, you can do so with this tool which lets you check out the OS and server software of your webhost, when its computers were last rebooted, and more.
51. DNS Stuff - Worried about keeping your domain name profile up to date? Use this program to check what’s in your WHOIS profile, and make sure you don’t have an obsolete e¬mail hanging out in there.
52. ServiceUptime - Worried about your site going down? This service will e-mail you if that happens, change the domain name being checked, and more.
53. Octagate Site Timer - Here’s another great tool for those worried about visitors with slower connections. You can measure how long it would take users to load multiple pages with this great, simple tool.
54. URI Valet - Here’s what your site really needs: a valet. Scope out your load time, server headers, internal links, image sizes, and more.
55. Browser Shots - While not as visceral as body shots, these Browser Shots are almost as intoxicating. It renders your site in Linux, Windows, Mac, and other browsers, meaning more people can enjoy your work.
56. NetRenderer If you’re a fan of Internet Explorer, you know its one weakness: it has more versions than Spiderman has clones. With this tool, you can render your site in everything from IE 5.5 to IE 8.0.
57. Piwik - One of the key draws to this great program is its features are built inside plug-ins, letting you choose what to keep and what to toss. You store the data it collects in your own database, including visitor tracking, keyword effectiveness, and other great tools.
58. AWStats - Definitely designed for the more visually minded, this tool generates web, streaming, ftp and mail server statistics in graphical format. It’s also great for analyzing log files, getting web compression statistics, sussing out HTTP errors and other great features.
59. JAWStats - As you may have figured out from the names, JAWStats is designed to work with AWStats. It gives you a variety of charts, graphs, and tables regarding visitors to your section of the Internet.
60. Clickheat -If you can’t stand the heat…well, get away from the monitor before you catch on fire. If you can stand the heat, use this tool to get a visual “heat map” of the hot spots on your Web site, define pages with keywords, log screen sizes and browsers, and more.
61. Analog - Sometimes an analog tool for the digital age is just what the doctor ordered. Analog reports in 32 languages, and lets you track usage patterns on your site with speed and customizability.
62. Track Yahoo Search Advertising - Just how effective is that Yahoo advertising? This tool helps you measure your Yahoo ad hits, making sure that you’re getting your money’s worth.
63. CrawlTrack - As a webmaster, what are you missing? If you answered “dashboard,” you’ll enjoy this tool that provides a downloads counter, blocks hacking attempts, tracks down the keywords that lured visitors in, and more.
64. W3Perl - Easy to install and easy to manage, W3Perl is beyond user-friendly. It can be used for page tagging and logfile analysis, and can even be run from your command line.
65. The Webalizer - This tool analyzes your web server log files, and produces them in an easy-to-read HTML format. The analysis is quick, the program is portable, and it supports dozens of languages.
66. Reinvigorate - Does your Web site monitoring need to be…well…reinvigorated? This tool gives you real-time info, granular visitor insight, desktop tracking and other cool features.
67. XiTi Free - This handy tool is already being used by over 350,000 sites. Use it to get a global view of your site, including visitor interest criteria, IP address exclusions, and awesome client support.
68. SpyFu - Think your Web site kung-fu is strong? This program estimates how much money your competition may be spending on advertisements, which can give you the edge.
69. ezine designer - It doesn’t get much simpler than this. Give them your Web site URL and a valid e-mail, and get notified if your site ever goes down, which is great for webmasters on the go.
70. Fiddler Web Debugging Tool - If you’d like to decode the conversation between browsers and your servers, this is the tool for you. In addition to its great debugging features, this tool won’t crash your browser like others of its kind.
71. Firefox: Web Developer Extension - If you’ve already got Firefox, you’re halfway there. This extension lets you remove cascading tiles, assess all of your external links, remove Javascript components, and more.

Analytic Programs for Web Sites

72. blvd - This program has almost all of the analytics you’ll need in one slick package. Get live stats, RSS conversion tracking, social media referral info and more.
73. goingup! - For those who feel like analytics packages lack a personal touch, this program clicks all the right buttons. You can personalize your dashboard, get the low-down on visitors, and even get tips on how to improve your web rankings.
74. Yahoo Web Analytics - This is a webtool that believes, like you, that “Web site visitors are now people, not clicks.” Tracking data is available in minutes (if not seconds), there’s 8 filters for scoping out your visitors, and you can track dozens of custom fields and on-site actions.
75. Open Web Analytics - This tool is all about building analytics right into your applications. This allows you to map users on Google Maps, scope out the age of your visitors, track their clicking, and a host of other cool features.
76. Google Analytics - You trust Google to find sites, so why not let them help you with yours? Track unique visitors, viewing trends, and use their unique visual analytics system.
77. Crazy Egg - If you liked Google Analytics’ overlay tool, then here’s a program that goes crazy with it. See visual representations of site visitors as a map representing just how hot (or cold) certain parts of your site are.
78. Slimstat - If you’d like your web analytics software with a bit of hot sauce, then here it is. In addition to normal analytics services, you’ll get bot tracking and spam filtering services, too.

Help for the SEO Impaired

79. Website Grader - Schooling yourself about your Web site has never been easier. Just give them your site, list any particular sites you’re in competition with, and receive an e-mail with how you compare in the Internet, with an option to receive ongoing e-mails.
80. Majestic SEO - Speaking of the competition, here’s another program to help you get a leg up on everybody else. It gives you detailed reports about other sites’ backlinks and anchor text, giving you the anatomy of your enemies.
81. Google Trends - What keywords does your site need to rock? Use the search masters, Google, and find out what hottest search phrases on the Internet are.
82. .htaccess URL Rewrite - Got some of those crazy-long URLs that send visitors scurrying? Shorten them to something more user-friendly with one simple step.
83. Cloaking Checker - Sadly, the Cloaking checker has nothing to do with Romulans. Instead, it lets you compare how search engines “see” pages as opposed to how browsers see pages.
84. Keyword Density Checker - Feel like your keywords are getting a little clustered? To make sure your site isn’t cluster-stuck, use this tool to examine keyword density in a handy tag-cloud format.
85. Search Engine Position -This cool tool has two simple components. Primarily, it lets you see how far up (or down) you are on Google searches; in addition to scoping your domain, you can put in certain keywords and see how they’re working for you.
86. Spider View - Skip being a fly on the wall, and try being a spider on the net. With this application you can view your chosen site from the perspective of a search engine spider.
87. Trifecta - Why measure just one aspect of a page when you can measure a trifecta? This program estimates the relative popularity of pages, blogs, and domains.
88. Term Target - It’s all about your mad Keyword targeting skills with this no-frills tool. It assigns any given page a grade based on how well the keywords are targeted.
89. Linkscape - If your internet marketing needs an edge, Linkscape will sharpen it right up. Identify linking domains, analyze the competition, find link acquisition targets, and more.
90. Term Extractor - This tool extracts terms that appear to be targeted at search engines. Check your own site’s effectiveness out, or just scope out the competition, with no installation required.
91. URL Redirect Check - Use a lot of re-directs? Make sure they’re search-engine friendly with one simple click.
92. Geo Target - Does your site’s marketing need to go global? Geo Target helps determine how effectively your site targets region-specific searches.
93. Check HTTP Status Code - Sometimes keeping your sites afloat is like being Scotty and keeping the Enterprise from blowing up. This quick tool spits out what status code a site is giving—sometimes you can even fix it problems without dilithium crystals.
94. IP2LOC - Simply give this site an IP address, and get a handy Google map of the area. Literally track down the competition, or just make sure your IP is giving off good vibrations.
95. Find Domain Age - Just how old is that domain? This simple tool gives you a quick, precise answer to that question.
96. Juicy Link Finder - Related to the previous program, this tool helps you old domains with high page ranks. You can specify searches by keywords, and see who the kings of that particular term are.
97. Raven - It’s all about optimization with this handy tool. It checks out your SEO components, examines what needs work, and lets you keep PDF records of its work.
98. Content Duplication Tool - Worried about duplicate info? This tool helps you sidestep the negative effects of duplicate info (such as index issues) and streamline your site.
99. Quarkbase - Consider this your base of information regarding info about your Web site. Find out how you’re looking on Facebook, Alexa, and everywhere else on the web.
100. Image Analyzer - How well do your images help out your Web site? This simple tool makes sure there’s no issues with image heights and widths, no images or text are missing, and so on.

These tools can provide you with imperative information about your Web site or online business. Never have a bad web page again and earn more traffic than ever before. Just think, you may never need another computer repairmen or webmaster.