Google's Blogger blog publishing and hosting service now has its own analytics feature that monitors a blog's usage, logs stats and displays reports and graphs.
Because Stats is a native feature of Blogger, publishers don't have to do anything special to activate it, only check the new Stats tab in their control dashboard.
Publishers can continue using other usage trackers, like Google Analytics or similar ones from other providers. However, integrating analytics tools with sites and blogs typically requires that publishers paste code in their Web pages or add gadget applications.
"You don't have to install or configure anything to start benefitting from Stats," wrote Google software engineers Staszek Paśko [and Wiktor Gworek in an official blog.
Blogger Stats logs data in what Google characterizes as "near real-time," so that publishers can closely monitor the popularity of postings as the day progresses. Publishers can also track usage by day, week, month and longer time periods.
In addition to the number of views that posts get, Blogger Stats captures data such as the site from where users are coming, the search query terms they're using to find the blog, their country and the browsers they use.
For now, the new Stats feature will be available to publishers who manage their blogs using Blogger In Draft, a version of Blogger where new features are first introduced before being rolled out to all Blogger users.