Monitoring traffic of a website is a fundamental part of the website audit. Every website owner wants a good deal of traffic on their website, be it for marketing purposes or for validation from the world. There are a plethora of free traffic monitoring tools available now.Gone are the days when traffic monitoring required one to be a coding geek (in a good way, of course, :p). There are multiple free traffic monitoring tools available that does not require you to have any prior coding knowledge.Yet the more thorough ones that offer you a deeper analysis into the characteristics of the website does require an understanding of reading and writing codes. This should not be a problem since the majority of the revenue-generating websites have a web developer on their team.You can find numerous traffic monitoring tools available online. But when it comes to deciding which one you should use, it gets really tough from there. But worry not, if that's why you are here then we have got you covered,Here is the list of our top free traffic monitoring tools that we recommend you use:
Google Analytics
The jack-of-all-trades, Google Analytics is our go-to tool for everything related to website auditing. It is specifically designed to enable the users (benefiting the beginners as well as the professionals equally) to make the most of the advanced algorithms it has to offer.Google Analytics gives you a summary of the sessions (with details about each session's duration), the bounce rate of the website, the number of users, etc. The graph makes it easier to monitor the progress of the website. Furthermore, you can also trace the source/medium the traffic is coming from.The tool is not only limited to monitoring your on-page traffic but it also lets you keep a check on the traffic the social channels are generating. You can even monitor the conversions from each of the channels.
Read more: Backlinks in SEO; identifying the bad ones!
Wireshark
The coding experts' favorite, Wireshark is a highly responsive tool when it comes to capturing traffic. This tool is used majorly by the professionals due to its certain intricacies. This is primarily why it comes with a user guide for a deeper insight into how it works.The tool lets you capture the entire data that you can also download with a couple of browsing options e.g. GUI. The downloaded data can be analyzed offline which is one of the tool's highlights.The tool can read/write in many different capture formats e.g. Microsoft Network Monitor, Catapult DCT2000, Networks Instruments Observer, Netscreen snoop, and a lot more.
Fiddlercap by Telerik
Fiddlercap by Telerik is one of the most user-friendly free traffic monitoring tools there are in the market. The tool can capture the packs of traffic that can then be studied more comprehensively.If the goal is to analyze the traffic in details then Fiddlercap is your guy (pun intended). The tool captures traffic and saves it in the saz format. The tool can be used to log all the HTTP traffic. Since it is a proxy, one has to make sure that the browser they are using supports one (such as Chrome, Firefox, Opera, etc.).Fiddlercap also allows you to edit a website session; pause and permit a particular session. This is a good feature if security is one of your top priority issues. Speaking of which, the tool allows you to decrypt the traffic as well. Decrypt the entire traffic or a single session, the tool is good both ways.
Final Word
You would be surprised to know that there are built-in tools in the windows that can fulfill the purpose up to some extent. The tool is called Resource Monitor that can tell you about the data usage.In a nutshell, monitoring traffic is easy in today's market. Tools, their guides, and tutorials; you have literally everything you need to get started. For the beginners, monitoring internet traffic might be challenging but the website's is a piece of cake.Free traffic monitoring tools being the cherry on top, capitalize on the free resources to make the most of your website.Do let us know what you think in the comments section below!
