Ad blockers and analytics

I just had an interesting conversation with my web design partner Lori Curley of Curley Marketing.  Third party analytics have gotten caught in the ad blocking drag net.  This means the numbers form third party apps like Google Analytics and Clicky analytics can be wildly skewed into the negative reducing their usefulness for webmasters.  Luckily most web hosts, including Etc Maryland, provide local analytics that are immune to such blocking.  Effectively third party analytics are good for seeing your spam rates while the local analytics are best for seeing actual traffic.  Webalizer is a good raw reporting too while AWstats is a good breakdown report of the traffic.  If you are a webmaster check if your web host has AWstats or something equivalent that does not depend on third party access.  Modern web servers track every hit, every visit, and request very well.  Local traffic analytics will provide you a total picture of your website analytics.