Share point - usage data/reporting - sharepoint

I do reporting/analytics for site usage and engagement for a share point online site with my company. I currently run the usage logs manually from site audit reports and the process is very time consuming and not always accurate. Does anyone know a better way to get these logs? Also has anyone had success in implementing a 3rd party platform to capture site visits like google analytics? We have tried to implement Matomo, but not much success.

#B1landry,
You may have a try Azure app insight, provides similar functionality to Google Analytics with the advantage of keeping your data in the same ecosystem.
Check below docs to get started:
https://sharepoint.handsontek.net/2019/02/19/how-to-add-application-insights-to-sharepoint-without-modifying-the-master-page/
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-monitor/app/sharepoint
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/answers/questions/246834/how-can-i-setup-a-sharepoint-online-site-usage-mon-1.html
BR

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PageSpeed Insights number of distinct samples to show data for a URL logic

I'm reading the PageSpeed Insights documentation and am wondering if anyone knows how Google is determining what is considered a sufficient number of distinct samples per this FAQ:
Why is the real-world Chrome User Experience Report speed data not available for a URL?
Chrome User Experience Report aggregates real-world speed data from opted-in users and requires that a URL must be public (crawlable and indexable) and have sufficient number of distinct samples that provide a representative, anonymized view of performance of the URL.
I'm building a report centered around Core Web Vitals data and realizing some URLs have few data points with CWV timings, and I'm curious exactly how Google is handling these situations. I've been searching through docs and articles, haven't found anything with a specific reference.
The exact threshold is kept secret, so that's why you won't find it documented anywhere. However, as a site owner there are a few things you can do to work around a URL not having sufficient data:
Use the Core Web Vitals report by Search Console, which groups similar pages together, making them more likely to collectively exceed that threshold.
Look at origin-level aggregations in PSI or the CrUX API. These include user experiences from all pages on the origin, so it's much less granular, but it gives you a sense of typical experiences overall.
Instrument your site with your own first-party Core Web Vitals monitoring. web-vitals.js can be integrated with your existing analytics provider to track vitals on all of your pages. If you're integrating with Google Analytics, you can link your data with the Web Vitals Report to see how your site is doing.
Use your site with the Web Vitals extension enabled to see the Core Web Vitals data for your own experience. Your local experiences may not be representative of most users, but this can be a great tool for validating expectations vs reality.
Use lab data as a proxy. For example, lab data from Lighthouse in PSI can tell you how a mobile user on a slow connection might experience your page. This should really only be used as a last resort when no other field data is available.

Gather browser details used to browse webpage

I am tasked with the development of a web page.
As a part of this, I also need to collect the details of browser used by the users to browse the web page (along with version, timestamp & IP).
Tried searching over the internet but maybe my search was not properly directed.
I am not sure how to go about this.
Any pointer to get me started here would help me a long way.
I would also like to know how to store the information thus collected.
Not sure if this is a good idea - but just thinking out loud - are there any online service/channel available where the data can be uploaded in real time - like thingspeak.
Thanks
Google Analytics is great, but it doens't give you the data (for free). So if you want your data in e.g. SQL format then I may suggest a you use a tool that collects the data for you and then sends it to Google Analytics.
We use Segment (segment.io, but there are probably other tools out there too) for this, they have a free plan. You will need to create a Warehouse in AWS and all your data will be stored there, incl. details of the browser (version, timestamp, IP).
Disclaimer: I do not work for Segment, but I am a customer.
Enable Google Analytics in your website, then after 1 week, take a look at the Google Analytics page to see data that was collected.
Follow the guide here to configure Google Analytics on your website: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1008080?hl=en
You should go for alternatives like Segment(https://segment.com/), Mixpanel(https://mixpanel.com/) and similars. They can guarantee consistency for your data and also integrate to many different analytics tools and platforms.

google analytics a/b testing with 2 site instances.

I am getting ready to release a new web site in the coming weeks, and would like the ability to run multivariate or a/b tests between two version of the site.
The site is hosted on azure, and I am using the Service Gateway to split traffic between the instances of the site, both of which are deployed from Visual Studio Online. One from the main branch and the other from an "experimental" branch.
Can I configure Google analytics to assist me in tracking the success of my tests. From what I have read Google analytics seems to focus on multiple versions of a page within the same site for running its experiments.
I have though of perhaps using 2 separate tracking codes, but my customers are not overly technically savvy, so I would like to keep things as simple as possible. I have also considered collecting my own metrics inside the application, but I would prefer to use an existing tool as I don't really have the time to implement something like that.
can this be done? are there better options? is there a good nugget package that might fulfil my needs? any advice welcome.
I'd suggest setting a custom dimension that tells you which version of the site the user is on. Then in the reports you can segment and compare the data.

How can I monitor web hits on my Azure role

I've been working on a web application and finally published it to Azure. The application is not critical and currently I use only one role to keep costs down.
I would like to start try and get a feel of who (if anyone is using my site). Can anyone give me some suggestions on how I could do this. What I would really like is not to use anything like the google scripts that I see some web sites use for monitoring page hits. I would like to do as much as possible on the server.
Help advice on where to start and what to look at would be much appreciated.
Katarina
Aside from things like Google Analytics and StatCounter, you'd want to set up some performance counters that you can watch externally. This requires you to use the Diagnostic Monitor:
Set up performance counters to track, and how often to poll for values
Set up frequency to upload to Table Storage
Diagnostic data is aggregated from all your instances, so then you can run queries against the diagnostic tables. Cerebrata has a page that details these table names (you can also use their Diagnostics Manager tool, other 3rd-party tools, or roll your own).
Igork posted this StackOverflow answer as well, which references some blog posts by Azure MVP Neil Mackenzie.
To add to Dave's answer, there are three levels of monitoring you can do:
If you want to know who is using your site, Google Analytics is best and free... There are a few others, but all involve injecting small javascript on your pages
If you want to know the load your site is under, inspecting performance counters via Cerebrata's tool is likely best # http://www.cerebrata.com
If you want to go one step further and be notified when the load on your site is outside your predefined conditions (active monitoring) or have your website automatically scale up when the load is too high, AzureWatch is probably the best option # http://www.paraleap.com
HTH

number of people that has visited the website

I am working on a website i will like to know the number of people who has visited the website. Can someone tell me what to do?
Use google analytics: http://www.google.com/analytics/
I would give you a code to insert but to be honest the best option is to use something like Google Analytics. It gives you a very good analysis of your website visits and has many features that will take you a very long time to develop
Since you've tagged this with asp.net, I presume you're running on IIS. Make sure logging is enabled for the site you're working with and then you can determine from the log files how many users are coming to your site by IP addresses.
Since it wasn't yet mentioned here in years, let me add that AWStats is very different from Google Analytics, but may anyway be a good web server traffic analysis tool for network administrators.

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