Raise Your Hand if You Love Google Analytics

Today is Technical Question Tuesday! I'm not going to make a habit of it - I don't think. But then again, I do have a lot of technical questions because I just.  Don't.  Get it.

Special note:  please overlook the hinky overhang at the bottom of this (and other) posts.  I'm workin' on it!  Well, don't ignore the new ability to take my posts viral(!), just ignore the fact that it's creeping into my sidebar because there's so much of it!  Crazy ol' girl here went and played in the html when I didn't know what I was getting into and have skewed my "look" just a tad.  Thank goodness for Rabbit who's helping a sad little amateur out of the woods.  Read on.

I wish to publically thank Rabbit from Red Head Dancing and Hal from Weblog Redux for their awesome, and I do mean awesome, help over the weekend. Rabbit "virtually" installed my email subscription and is "virtually" adjusting my margins for me AND Hal introduced me to a whole new Twitter understanding - Tweetdeck. WHERE HAVE I BEEN THE LAST THREE MONTHS?? Thanks guys - seriously - people could take lessons from your altruism. Go check out their blogs as a thank you, OK everyone?


Anyway.  On with the story.

I feel like I'm talking about Mom and Dad while they're listening in on the telephone - talking about Google on Google's Blogger. 

But I need to know from you - what's so great about Google Analytics?   

I've been trying to understand why my Google Analytics Visitor number stays generally constant on the Analytics home page, whereas by the Sitemeter count I actually have 3 times as many visits as Google shows.  I was beginning to think this was a RUSE by Google so that when/if one installed AdSense, one's "count" would always stay at a certain level, thus removing the need for AdSense to pay anything.

Alas, through extensive research yesterday, I have determined that Analytics is only showing me the "count" for 30 day increments.  Why do they do that?  So here is my question for my technologically advanced readers:  What do you prefer  - Google Analytics, Site Meter, or something else entirely?  If Analytics, how do you track your stats from the inception of installing it?  Or can you not?