Traffic mongers and general-purpose stats hounds now have another compelling reason to use Blogger: last night, a statistics tool called Blogger Stats was introduced, and believe it or not, it in some ways one-ups Google Analytics.

The first advantage of Blogger Stats is that it’s integrated, meaning Blogger users won’t have to deal with separate products and logins.  The second improvement – and this is where the appeal to certain people lies – is that the stats relayed by the new tool are delivered in "near-real-time."

A post on the official Blogger in Draft blog explained, "You can see which posts are getting the most visits and which sites are sending traffic to your blog right now.  For example, if a reader shares one of your blog posts on Twitter and the post is getting lots of clicks, you will see a traffic increase in Blogger Stats almost instantly, with the particular Tweet mentioning your post being identified as the traffic source."

The post later added, "There’s also a lot more data that’s being tracked, such as popular search keywords that send visitors to your blog, which country your visitors come from, and which web browsers they are using.  Basically, with the new Stats feature, you know what’s going on with your blog right now."

Users seem impressed so far.  The only complaints tend to revolve around the perceived shortcomings of Google Analytics, in fact (now that Blogger Stats has the real-time edge).

The Blogger Stats tool can be accessed through the "Stats" tab of Blogger in Draft if you feel like experimenting with it yourself.