Free internet monitor software?

[lanpi]

Can anyone suggest good, free, software used to monitor usage of websites? I would like to have information about how much time is spent on websites that are not related to business on each company computer. Is there a free software used in this purpose? Thanks

[v2Media]

Depends on your skills at installing web apps are (none/basic/intermediate), what your hosting server supports, and what kind of stat logs your web server generates.

I prefer awstats on linux/unix and urchin on windows. Both require intermediate web app skills to install and configure securely and both require standard log file generation by your webserver.

[v2Media]

Oh - I only recommend web stats programs that use the server logs for the source of data. Any web stats app that requires you to add scripting or tracking images to your webpages are dodgy and will give inaccurate records of your website usage. This includes Google Analytics (which is crap).

[help_from_ingenyes]

You can not go past Google Analytics (which is free). It's based on Urchin. (According to Wikipedia) "currently in use on around 57% of the 10,000 most popular websites." WHich I think is a pretty good recomendation.

It's good not just because it is such a very powerful and granular way to monitor traffic but because of the add ons that google constantly offer to extend it's usability. Integration with Google Adwords is terrific.

http://www.google.com/analytics/

I would also recommend Googles webmaster tool. This lets you maximise your website's performance.

http://www.google.com/webmasters/

It is free but there are better resources out there but they can be very expensive. If you would like to see a paid product check out Omniture (have a look at the price).

http://www.omniture.com/en/products/...arketing-suite

Cheers - Ingenyes.

[AdeptSmallBusinessIT]

i think the OP wants to monitor what websites his employees are looking at, rather than who is looking at his websites. Thus google analytics and awstats etc aren't much help for this.

I can't think of free solutions that would do what you want, but firewalls like Kerio and Forefront might do the trick. I guess, on a free level, you could implement a CentOS or Ubuntu server, and use Squid to log and report on everything.