So I've been trying out a combination of Feedburner, Podtrac, and Ripple stats services over the past week or two with Startup BizCast, and I figured I'd post my thoughts on the three. Maybe others have different ideas. I'd love to hear them. Stats reporting seems to be a big problem with podcasts.

Podtrac: I had severe trouble setting up this service. It turns out if you have podpress stats turned on, Podtrac won't work. After a week and a half trying to get Podtrac to help me figure out what was wrong, it was finally up and running. I like Podtrac's system well enough, but I've noticed two different times since I started with them that they've just "taken the day off". One of the days was this week, on Thursday the 29th. No stats were recorded or reported for any of the episodes on that day. I find it rather hard to believe there wasn't at least one download of my five episodes plus promos. I also don't like that Podtrac's stats are only updated once per day. I'm a stats junkie, so I like logging in and seeing updated numbers. I also don't much like the color scheme on their measurement page -- blue on blue just doesn't work for me. I do like their tools, though. The podcast player is a good one I think, and their listener survey feature would be nice if I could get anyone to fill it out for me.

Ripple: Ripple was easy to set up and the stats appear to be accurate. You can review your stats via RSS feed, which is a cool feature. The problem I have with them is that, unless I've missed it, they don't have a page where you can compare your downloads by episode by day. That seems to be something huge they've left out. One huge advantage they have is that they report nearly real-time stats, updated once an hour throughout the day.

Feedburner: Feedburner's stats were only really designed to pick up feed downloads, and they seem to do that very well. If you put separate download links in your blog post, you can use the Feedburner enclosure link, which allows them to pick up the stats. But, to do that you have to post the podcast enclosure on your feed, then go get the Feedburner enclosure link, then post it on your blog. That's really a pain in the rump, if you ask me. Feedburner updates stats throughout the day, but there's a 24-hour lag on reporting.

Unfortunately, none of these services do everything I want and do it well. I'd really rather use ONE stats service, but it appears that I'll continue to use a combination of all three.

I can't stand Podtrac, personally. There are a couple reasons, both equally tied on my Disdain-O-Meter.

#1 was the survey. At the time we tried it out last year, the questions seemed to be all about beer and gadgets. In addition, unless a certain number of people took the survery, you didn't get to see any results. When we set it up, they never indicated the amount of people who had to take it. I was aware of several that told me they took it, but never saw any results.

#2 Is that they were incredibly hard to reach, especially in regards to Support issues. I'm surprised you actually got any help at all, as practically none of the Support requests we made were ever responded to. This was especially vexing, since they were the ones who approached us about joining their service. In fact, the only time we ever had any action taken on a Support issue was when we demanded that our account be cancelled.

And just a final note or two about Podtrac versus Feedburner: At the time we utilized them, you also had to to tag your blog and feed with a code, so FeedBurner is at no disadvantage in my mind because of that, and I frankly didn't think Podtrac's stats were any better than Feedburner's. I would also point out about Feedburner that there is a code that you can use to count hits on the site as well as the feed, and that just needs to be added once.


Eric

They didn't respond to my emails either. I called their office in Washington and bugged them until they helped me.

You mentioned site stats -- I use Webstat for that and have been using them for other sites for years. I do have Feedburner's code on my site, though, and check out those stats every so often. What I like about Webstat is that they can tell you what search people used to find you if they used a traditional search engine. Pretty interesting stuff in there.

I use switchpod fr my hostig witch I am sorry to say does not allow podtrac to work at all so I had to drop podtrac. I love podtrac cause I could track world downloads and usage - but switch pod only gives me vague numbers - this many today - not where or how...
Frustrating - but who can complai for $10 a month?

http://www.storytellingwithchildren.com

I should really switch to feedburner for reasons I don't undestand I remain clueles as to the reason for doing it - coudl a feed burner fantic please preach to teh ignoratn masses? (me)