The first thing I'll say is if you're looking for specific data, then this isn't for you. In the end, google analytics still wins hands down, but that doesn't mean I won't be using the blogger stats! When I'm too lazy to log into GA, I'll probably have a quick look at it...
Now that said, I realised it's going to be a little be harder than I thought to compare blogger stats to google analytics because blogger stats only shows page view. In other words, one visitor could land on your blog, and go through like 5-10 posts of yours but you won't know if it's the same visitor or not! Personally, I'm not really big on using page views as a goal metric to determine the popularity of my blog, because it's not unique enough for my liking. It's good to show what people read the most, but it doesn't show you if it's one person or multiple persons!
I love the fact that it shows your referral sources and the country of origin. This way I know if another website has linked to me, if a comment I dropped as gotten me a new page view or if my ranking on Google is getting better. With the country origin option, I get to know where most of my readers are coming from, whether it's Nigeria, UK or USA (these are my main country origins, in no particular order).
I also love the updated by-the-minute page view, showing you the peak time for most page views. It gives you an insight into the best times to post articles and times not to. It's a good thing I didn't end up paying for Get Clickey, because I'm now getting the service for free with the blogger stats.
I'm not happy about the fact that there's no way to filter the tracking tool. I had a look at five old articles of mine and found out it was tracking my page view! That's not good. I know I tend to go through a lot of my old posts at times, so that means it's going to be tracking my view as well, that's going to lead to a lot of discrepancy in the data... I'm hoping this will change as blogger updates the stats feature.
All in all, I think the blogger stat is a great break-the-ice tool into the world of web analytics for any blogger. It's not something I would completely vouch for yet, due to a few discrepancies with the data, but other than that, I'll definitely recommend the blogger stats to anyone using blogger.
In fact I think I'm going to start recommending Blogger a bit more now! And besides, they've done it again! You can now upload your own background image on blogspot. Or rather, it's easier to to do it, I know a lot of geeks out there had already figured out how to do it themselves. Blogger has just made it easier for the lesser 'geeks'!
What do you think of the blogger stats and background feature? I think Blogger is now starting to come to it's own as a Content Management System. Wordpress has a head start, so I'm not sure if Blogger would be able to catch up, but fortunately, it's not stopping them from trying! Who knows, their efforts might just pay up in the long run...
Good luck Blogger!!
Update 27/08/10: Good News! Blogger has updated the Stats tracker with an option "don't track my Page View". So you can prevent your own pageviews from being counted. Just make sure you do it for every Internet browser you use... Good stuff!
