WebTrends also can trigger audio, e-mail and pager alerts to notify administrators of a service failure or slow response from a Web site or service; we created a ping and Web service alert for our test server. We unplugged the test server from the network, and WebTrends immediately sent an e-mail and SNMP trap to our network management software. Reactivation alerts can be configured to let you know when the service(s) become available after a failure.

WebTrends can monitor disk space and a number of services, including DNS, finger, FTP, HTTP(S), IRC, NNTP (Network News Transport Protocol), local NT services, ODBC (Open Database Connectivity), Ping, POP3, RWhoIs, SMTP, telnet, URLs and WhoIS.

Tetranet Software Linkbot Pro 3.6b
Tetranet takes a segmented approach with enterprise and workgroup solutions for Web site analysis and indexing, offering a few versions of Linkbot. Whether you're looking for a lightweight link analyzer for your home page or a full-blown solution for a corporate Web site, Tetranet has a solution for you.

Linkbot Pro scanned our test Web site much faster than its rivals. With its sleek Microsoft Explorer-like interface and intuitive options and filters, Linkbot Pro holds its own against WebTrends and Site Server, and easily outdoes Astra SiteManager and WebChallenger across the board. And Linkbot Pro's price is right; Web site administrators will be delighted to get a comprehensive link analyzer for less than $300.

Link Examination Linkbot Pro's interface includes property tabs for each link. Links are displayed according to the link depth, starting with the root page, with which you begin the link analysis. You can browse a list of the scanned URLs for individual URL information, something you can't do with WebTrends. After we scanned our test site, we were able to follow the site's flow by expanding each link we wanted to explore. Each link has five tabs--child links, parent links, HTML, browse and properties--which let administrators view each link's properties or generate an HTML-based report characterizing the entire site.

Linkbot Pro's HTML reports are frame-based and quickly navigable using the index in the right-hand frame. We found Linkbot Pro's reports to be far superior to those generated by Site Server, WebChallenger and Astra SiteManager in terms of layout and navigation. However, we found the reports slightly lacking in terms of valuable criticism when compared to those from WebTrends.

Linkbot Pro provides moderate amounts of useful information in both the program interface and the HTML reports. The reports offer sections that show which links are new, old or slow and include a unique transfer-rate table that indicates Web content download speeds for modem, ISDN and T1 based on file and page size. Other sections include an image gallery complete with thumbnails, broken links, orphaned URLs (links that cannot be reached from another link) and lists of links with low-level HTML syntax errors and missing information such as title.

No other product we tested displayed images in this manner, and of the products we tested, only WebTrends and WebChallenger examine HTML syntax.

However, though Linkbot Pro's reports present information in a meaningful way, WebTrends does a better job of detailing potential troublesome spots with its suggestions and its report format.

Linkbot Pro had a hard time with the reference system configuration, but it performed faster than WebTrends, Astra SiteManager, Site Server and WebChallenger on our smaller test site. From start to finish the Linkbot Pro Web site scan was faster than the competition.

Microsoft Corp. Site Server 3.0
Web site administrators appreciate the convenience of a package such as Microsoft's Site Server 3.0, which addresses several needs--publishing, indexing, log-file analysis and site management--in one box. However, for this round of tests, we were interested only in Site Server's analysis components: Content Analyzer, Custom Import, Report Writer and Usage Import. We found these tools generally to be more comprehensive and flexible than WebTrends, Linkbot Pro and Astra SiteManager; unfortunately, we also discovered that Site Server was much more difficult to use, especially in terms of installation and setup.