Web Analytics is a tool to provide data on what pages of a website are being visited by who and when. We use Google Analytics, which has been great - and works very well for a daily look at what kind of traffic is coming to our community and where people are coming from.

I usually visit Google Analytics at the end of each US day to see what has happened and what's been hit hardest on the Sift. It's also handy to find out if another big site or other MSM source has linked to our content.

There are limitations however. For one - the results are delayed by a couple of hours and only arrive once every hour. There is also no way to share the stats because Google has not published an API for its analytics service

That's why I'm completely blown away by Chartbeat, which provides realtime stats for what's happening on a site and plenty of widgets and a fully accessible API to integrate into the site. Have a look at this fellow stat junkies - it will knock your socks off.

Edit: Due to the API used, we might be providing a little too much information. For security's sake, I'm pulling access until we've conferred with the Chartbeat guys on how to make this completely safe. Then we'll make it a permanent installation on the site. (Thanks JoeDirt!)