What if you could build your own Google Analytics program? What if instead of having to use a 3rd party service such as Google Analytics, I told you that you could host your own application and keep all your website statistical information private? That’s what Piwik is for! Piwik is an open source web analytics application written in PHP and MySQL that you can install and manage on your own web server. I literally just finished installing it 5 minutes ago on my Dreamhost server and it is working like a charm.

Why would you want to do this? Well there are several reasons and benefits behind hosting your own analytics application. Let’s talk about a few of these.

Reason #1: Your information is private. Keep it that way!

Not that Google is interested in throwing your information around to the world or anything. But it’s nice, especially when you work online for a living to have your web information kept as private as possible. It just makes you feel more comfortable at the end of the day to know what you are the only one who knows the detail on your web traffic.

Reason #2: Real-time information

If you are a Google or Yahoo Web Analytics user chances are you have done what the rest of us has. That is wait til the next day anxiously to see what your unique visits and page views were the day before. When you host your web analytics application, you give yourself the opportunity to see your traffic real-time. I love this because I can make SEO/SEM/Blogging adjustments throughout the day as I analyze my traffic.

Reason #3: One word, Expandability

This is sort of the repetitive theme when it comes to open source. But it’s true yet again with web analytics. When you host your own open source analytics app, you have the ability to add custom functionality to your analytics software either through community plugins or through your own diligence.

I’m serious when I say that Piwik is one of the best open source web applications out there! I’m a big fan and even as i’m writing this post i’m checking my real-time analytics to see what’s going on. It’s so awesome! I highly recommend this app. Download, install and have fun!