SharePoint Online (part of Microsoft 365) is a powerful platform for enterprise content management and collaboration. However, ensuring it delivers value requires insight into how employees actually use it. Analytics tools provide data on usage and user behavior, helping organizations drive user adoption and optimize their intranet. Microsoft offers some built-in analytics for SharePoint Online, but these out-of-the-box reports are fairly basic. Many enterprises therefore consider third-party analytics solutions to gain deeper insights. This report compares Microsoft’s native SharePoint Online analytics with leading enterprise-grade third-party tools, evaluates their capabilities (from page view tracking to integration and personalization features), and identifies commonly adopted solutions in large organizations.

Microsoft 365 includes several built-in analytics features for SharePoint Online and related services:

• SharePoint Site Usage Reports: Every SharePoint site has a Site Usage page showing metrics like site visits, unique viewers, and page views over various periods (7, 30, 90 days). It also shows popular content and the new average time spent per user on pages, giving an estimate of how long users actively read page content. For individual pages or news posts, page analytics show views, viewers, and time spent per user. These reports are easily accessible to site owners but have limited scope (e.g. they do not list specific users or granular click paths).

• Microsoft 365 Usage Analytics (Admin Center & Power BI): Administrators can view usage trends in the Microsoft 365 Admin Center, or use the SharePoint usage reports and the Microsoft 365 Adoption content pack in Power BI. These provide tenant-level insights such as total active sites, storage used, and overall user activity over the last 7, 30, 90, or 180 days. The Power BI adoption reports (formerly called content pack) aggregate usage across M365 services (SharePoint, OneDrive, Teams, etc.), offering interactive dashboards for trends and adoption metrics. While valuable, these focus on high-level adoption and lack page-level detail or advanced filtering.

• Microsoft Search Insights: SharePoint’s modern search experience includes built-in search usage reports. Admins can see the top search queries, queries with low click-through (abandoned queries), and queries with no results. Data is available for the past 31 days (daily) and up to 12 months (monthly) by downloading reports. These insights help identify content gaps or ineffective search results. However, beyond what’s provided (top 10 queries, etc.), customization is limited.

Overall, Microsoft’s out-of-the-box analytics provide basic usage statistics (visits, viewers, popular content) and some search metrics, which are useful for a quick health check. They require little effort to use and have improved over time (for example, the addition of the “time spent per user” metric on pages). Integration within M365 is native – no extra setup – and data is secured in the Microsoft cloud. However, limitations include short data retention windows, no detailed click tracking or path analysis, and few ways to customize or correlate data. Microsoft’s analytics “scope of the data collected is limited”, covering only fundamental metrics. For deeper analysis – such as tracking specific user behaviors, longer-term trends, or combining SharePoint data with other sources – organizations often turn to third-party tools.

Third-party analytics platforms fill the gaps by offering advanced tracking and richer insights into SharePoint Online usage. Below is an overview of leading enterprise-grade solutions and their core capabilities, strengths, and weaknesses:

CardioLog Analytics is a specialized SharePoint and Microsoft 365 analytics solution that provides comprehensive usage tracking and reporting. Key capabilities include:

• Deep SharePoint Usage Tracking: CardioLog inserts a JavaScript snippet in SharePoint pages to capture detailed user actions. It tracks not only page views but also interactions like link/button clicks, document downloads, video plays, form submissions, and other UI events. This extended tracking covers behaviors that SharePoint’s native analytics do not log by default.

• Extensive Reporting Library: It comes with 100+ preconfigured reports and dashboards out-of-the-box. These reports cover areas like content popularity, user activity, navigation paths, search usage, engagement metrics, and more. Users can also build custom dashboards or ad-hoc reports for any site, page, or segment of users.

• User Segmentation & Filtering: Because CardioLog is built for SharePoint, it can filter and segment reports by SharePoint metadata and user attributes (e.g. by department, AD groups, site, geography). This helps identify usage patterns for specific audiences or content categories. It also offers a hierarchical “portal tree” view to drill into analytics by site structure.

• Deployment Options: CardioLog can be deployed as a SaaS service or on-premises within the organization’s environment. The on-prem option appeals to organizations with strict data control requirements. Either way, the customer retains ownership of the data collected. CardioLog uses a combination of client-side tracking and SharePoint APIs to gather data.

• Advanced Modules: Beyond passive analytics, CardioLog offers add-ons for engagement. For example, a “Gamify” module can reward users with points for SharePoint activity to encourage adoption. Their “Engage” module allows targeting users with messages or surveys based on analytics – essentially using behavior data to personalize outreach. These features enable data-driven campaigns, like prompting users who haven’t visited a new portal section, which is a unique way to leverage analytics for personalization.

Strengths: CardioLog is one of the most feature-rich SharePoint analytics platforms. It is fully tailored to SharePoint/Office 365 (with knowledge of SharePoint’s structure and user context). Users praise its friendly interface and the ability to create custom dashboards easily. It captures a wide range of engagement metrics (including social interactions like likes and comments) and even supports analytics for related services like Teams or Yammer via additional modules. Because it can be self-hosted, it appeals to enterprises that need analytics but are concerned about cloud data privacy. In short, CardioLog provides the depth and flexibility needed for serious intranet analytics and optimization guidance (e.g. it offers recommendations for content improvement).

Weaknesses: The primary downside is cost. CardioLog is a premium solution – it has been noted as one of the most expensive SharePoint analytics tools (second only to Webtrends in initial cost). Licensing often limits the number of analyst users who can design reports, unless you opt for higher tiers. Implementing the JavaScript tracking across all sites may require some governance (adding it via a SharePoint Framework extension or similar). Additionally, while CardioLog provides lots of data, organizations need the resources to interpret and act on those insights (CardioLog does not inherently “fix” issues; it highlights them). Overall, large enterprises with the budget and need for deep SharePoint insights often consider CardioLog for its rich capabilities despite the cost.

tyGraph (by AvePoint, which acquired tyGraph’s parent company) is an analytics suite focused on Microsoft 365 services. tyGraph for SharePoint specifically provides usage and adoption analytics with a business intelligence approach. Key capabilities include:

• Unified Microsoft 365 Analytics: tyGraph is designed to aggregate data across multiple M365 workloads. For SharePoint Online, it collects data on site and file activity, user interactions, sharing, and more, but it can also combine this with signals from Teams, Yammer (Viva Engage), Exchange, OneDrive, etc. in the tyGraph Enterprise package. This means organizations get a holistic view of collaboration – for example, correlating SharePoint file usage with Teams channel activity or Yammer engagement.

• Power BI Integration: tyGraph delivers its reports via Power BI. It offers pre-built Power BI report templates that customers can install (from Microsoft AppSource) for interactive dashboards. Users can slice and dice the data within Power BI or augment the data model as needed. This leverages a familiar tool (Power BI) for visualization, making it easier to create executive dashboards or export data. All SharePoint analytics data can be enriched with external info (like HR data on role, region, department) to build insightful reports.

• SharePoint Adoption and Inventory: tyGraph provides visibility into sites, pages, and documents – e.g. which sites are most active, which documents are being accessed, and who the top users are. It can identify active vs. inactive sites, external user access, and other adoption metrics. This helps with governance (identifying stale content) as well as measuring engagement.

• Near Real-Time Data via Graph/Audit Logs: Rather than using a tracking script, tyGraph pulls data from Microsoft 365 (Graph API, audit logs, and other connectors). Activity is updated on a frequent schedule (for example, SharePoint usage is typically refreshed daily or more often). While not truly real-time to the minute, this approach ensures comprehensive coverage of events (including document opens, downloads, sharing events that a client-side script might miss) and reduces performance impact on SharePoint.

• Focus on Usability: tyGraph is positioned as user-friendly analytics for business stakeholders. The reports emphasize clarity and actionability – for instance, adoption trend charts, leaderboards of most active teams or users, etc. The idea is to allow leadership to make evidence-based decisions to improve ROI on M365 without needing data science expertise.

Strengths: tyGraph’s biggest strength is its breadth of integration in the Microsoft ecosystem. It’s not limited to SharePoint – organizations can use one solution to cover many services, which is beneficial for an Office 365-centric digital workplace. The use of Power BI makes it highly customizable and familiar; companies can extend the analytics or combine them with other data (e.g., import Dynamics 365 data or HR data into the model). There is no need to deploy tracking code on SharePoint, simplifying implementation. Because it leverages Microsoft’s own data (the Graph/audit), data privacy and security are managed within the tenant (tyGraph stores and processes the data in Azure, and AvePoint is a trusted Microsoft partner). Another strength is multi-tenant or cross-tenant analytics – for large organizations or mergers, tyGraph can consolidate insights across multiple M365 tenants, which native tools cannot easily do. Finally, tyGraph’s focus on adoption metrics and benchmarks helps enterprises drive user engagement in a more structured way.

Weaknesses: One limitation is that tyGraph is bound by the data Microsoft provides. If certain user interactions (like specific on-page clicks or hover actions) are not logged by SharePoint or captured in the audit log, tyGraph won’t report them (unlike a JS-based tracker). For example, fine-grained page element clicks or heatmaps are not part of tyGraph’s offering. Its refresh is typically daily, so it’s not meant for real-time monitoring of a live event. Additionally, while Power BI is powerful, some business users might find it less straightforward than a purpose-built UI – initial training may be needed to navigate filters and slicers. In terms of cost, tyGraph is a licensed product (often subscription-based per user or workload), though typically priced competitive to similar enterprise tools. Since tyGraph is now part of AvePoint, it’s often sold as part of a larger suite, which could be either a pro or con depending on if you need those other capabilities. Overall, tyGraph is a popular choice for organizations wanting broad Microsoft 365 analytics with minimal deployment hassle, especially if they are already invested in Power BI and want cross-platform insights.

Webtrends is a veteran player in web analytics and has an offering tailored to SharePoint (often known as Webtrends SharePoint Analytics). This tool provides deep web-style analytics for SharePoint portals. Key capabilities include:

• Comprehensive Visitor Analytics: Webtrends collects very detailed, visitor-level data on SharePoint usage. Like CardioLog, it typically uses a script or beacon embedded in SharePoint pages to track every page view and click. It was designed specifically in partnership with Microsoft years ago to handle SharePoint’s structure. As a result, it can measure things native SharePoint reports cannot, giving a “detailed, visitor-level view” from documents to lists and blogs.

• In-Depth Engagement Reports: Webtrends offers a rich set of reports and visualizations. For example, it provides click heatmaps overlaying on pages to show where users click (and these are noted to be more accurate for SharePoint pages than Google’s generic in-page analytics). It also has navigation path analysis, showing how users move through the intranet – it can track user click paths up to 20 clicks deep into a session and identify drop-off points. Reports can be filtered by user attributes like department or SharePoint group, enabling analysis of behavior by role or audience segment. There are also out-of-box reports for things like on-site search phrases (including which searches got no clicks) and link tracking to see which links or buttons are most used.

• Customizable Dashboards: Webtrends includes a dashboarding interface where you can select the metrics that matter to you. You can create and save custom views of data “on the fly”, which analysts find useful for exploratory analysis. This flexibility allows quick insight generation without waiting for a scheduled report.

• Enterprise-Scale and Social Integration: Webtrends is used by many large enterprises (it has claimed over 300 enterprise customers for SharePoint including Microsoft itself). It is built to handle high volumes of data across large user bases. Historically, Webtrends could also incorporate SharePoint’s social data (e.g., usage of features like commenting, tagging) and has been used to measure SharePoint-based public-facing websites as well.

Strengths: Webtrends is a mature, robust analytics platform with specific tuning for SharePoint. It excels at visualizing user behavior (heatmaps, paths) and providing insights that help improve intranet usability (e.g. identifying under-utilized links or poor search results). Its ability to segment by user profile properties is valuable for tailoring the intranet to different departments. Webtrends has a wealth of experience in analytics, so it offers a lot of documentation and best practices. For organizations already familiar with Webtrends from web analytics, extending it to SharePoint can leverage existing expertise. Another strength is that it can track across SharePoint and other web assets, so if an intranet spans multiple platforms or includes SharePoint content published on an external site, Webtrends can unify that tracking. It’s often considered a “gold standard” for SharePoint analytics in terms of data depth and accuracy of measuring SharePoint-specific interactions.

Weaknesses: The cost is high. Webtrends’ solution is typically priced at the high end (license and ongoing maintenance), often with a usage-based component. This puts it in the upper tier of expense. Also, Webtrends has a steeper learning curve than many other tools. New users (especially non-analysts) might need training to fully utilize the advanced features and interpret the data. The interface, while powerful, has historically been less intuitive than say Google Analytics. Another consideration is deployment complexity: adding Webtrends to SharePoint might involve coordinating with the Webtrends team to correctly instrument the environment. In recent years, Webtrends as a company underwent some changes, and while the SharePoint product is still supported, some enterprises wonder about its roadmap compared to newer entrants. In summary, Webtrends is very capable and was once the default choice for many Fortune 500 SharePoint intranets, but its high cost and complexity mean it’s now chosen primarily by organizations that absolutely need its advanced features and have the resources to support it.

HarePoint is known for SharePoint add-ons, and their HarePoint Analytics is an analytics solution initially popular for on-premises SharePoint. They now offer a cloud-oriented version for SharePoint Online that runs as a managed app in the customer’s Azure environment. Key capabilities include:

• In-Tenant Deployment: Unlike SaaS solutions that store data in vendor clouds, HarePoint Analytics is deployed into your own Azure tenant as an Azure application. This means all SharePoint Online analytics data is processed and stored within your controlled environment (addressing data sovereignty or compliance concerns). Companies with strict policies against third-party cloud services find this architecture appealing.

• Comprehensive Usage Metrics: HarePoint captures a wide range of usage data: number of users, visits over time, page views, and content popularity. It gathers details on user behavior such as the user’s location (geo-data), device and OS, entry and exit pages, and referrers. It effectively can do web-style analytics for SharePoint pages (similar to Google Analytics or Webtrends) but focused on SharePoint content.

• Search Analytics: The tool tracks search requests and results – it can report on what users are searching for, which results they clicked (follow-up path), and even metrics like average search time. This helps in tuning the search experience by revealing unsuccessful searches or slow queries.

• Content and Performance Insights: HarePoint goes beyond just hit counts. It identifies popular versus obsolete content (which documents or pages are heavily used vs which haven’t been touched, aiding content lifecycle decisions). It also monitors document library growth and even versioning activity, which can highlight content sprawl issues. Additionally, it measures page load times and usage performance over periods – useful for administrators to spot performance bottlenecks affecting users.

• Power BI and Reporting: HarePoint comes with ready-to-use dashboards and can integrate deeply with Power BI for visualization. Users can drill down and cross-filter reports for analysis. It supports scheduling email reports to stakeholders and exporting data for further analysis. Essentially, it provides a rich reporting interface out-of-box but also the flexibility to use the data in Power BI or other tools as needed.

Strengths: The standout strength of HarePoint Analytics is the data control and security it offers by operating within your Azure tenant. This zero-trust approach means no analytics data leaves your organization’s boundaries, which is a big plus for industries like finance, government, or healthcare. The feature set covers both user-centric analytics and admin-focused metrics, bridging the gap between measuring engagement and monitoring system usage. It’s relatively easy to deploy from Azure Marketplace and doesn’t require inserting custom code on pages (it leverages the SharePoint audit/log data and maybe some API hooks). For organizations that want to quickly start analyzing SharePoint usage, the provided dashboards mean value is realized quickly. Also, HarePoint is often praised for being cost-effective compared to giants like CardioLog or Webtrends – it’s described as a reasonably priced option for what it offers. Finally, HarePoint allows filtering reports by AD properties, SharePoint metadata, etc., similar to other SharePoint-focused solutions.

Weaknesses: In earlier comparisons, HarePoint was noted to have a somewhat basic interface and fewer bells and whistles than competitors. For example, older versions lacked features like goal tracking, complex pivoting of data, or social analytics (tracking likes, shares). It also did not provide certain advanced analytics out-of-the-box, such as robust search analytics for on-prem (though in the Online version they have added search query reporting) and fancy visualizations like heatmaps. While the integration with Power BI adds flexibility, the default UI might not be as modern or marketing-friendly as some SaaS offerings. Another consideration is that since it runs in your tenant, your Azure resources will be used for data processing and storage – this gives control but also means you’ll manage the app’s performance/scaling (with HarePoint’s support). In short, HarePoint is a strong middle-ground solution: not as feature-saturated as CardioLog or Webtrends, but often “good enough” for many enterprise needs at a lower cost, with the big advantage of keeping data in-house.

While not built specifically for SharePoint, Google Analytics (GA) has been widely used by organizations to track SharePoint Online usage due to its familiarity and cost (the standard version is free). Many companies simply inject the Google Analytics tracking code into their SharePoint pages (via a script or extension) and collect data. Key points about using GA in SharePoint Online:

• General Web Analytics Features: GA (especially the latest GA4) provides robust web analytics capabilities applicable to SharePoint pages. It can track page views, time on page, click events (if instrumented), user flow through pages, and other engagement metrics. Features like in-page click analysis, goal/conversion tracking, and custom event tracking can be configured in GA. GA also offers rich visualization options (charts, graphs, real-time dashboards) and an extensive analysis interface that many marketers and analysts know how to use.

• Ease of Use and Cost: The basic version of Google Analytics is free for up to a high threshold of hits (GA4 allows up to 10 million hits per month without cost). This makes it attractive for budget-conscious projects or initial analytics efforts. Once the tracking code is placed in SharePoint (which does require a bit of setup), the GA dashboards start capturing data with no further infrastructure needed. GA’s learning curve is moderate, and a huge community and documentation exist, given its widespread use.

• Common Usage Metrics: Organizations using GA with SharePoint typically monitor metrics like total page views, unique users, top visited pages, bounce rate (if applicable internally), and session duration. GA can also be extended to track clicks on specific elements in SharePoint (for example, navigation links or document downloads) by using Google Tag Manager or custom event scripts. Mobile access is covered too – GA will track usage from browsers or the SP mobile app (if the tracking code executes there).

• Limitations in an Intranet Scenario: Google Analytics is a general web tool and not SharePoint-aware. It cannot inherently capture SharePoint-specific actions that don’t involve a page load (e.g., opening a document in the Office Online viewer, or using the SharePoint native menus). It also cannot track data stored only server-side in SharePoint, such as user profile attributes or document library events, unless those are somehow exposed to the client side. Importantly, GA is governed by Google’s terms which prohibit sending personally identifiable information (PII) to Google’s servers. This means you cannot, for instance, configure GA to record a user’s username or email as part of the analytics – doing so would violate the terms. All users would appear anonymized (by ID or cookie), making it hard to get user-specific insights or segment by department unless you set up proxy identifiers. Data collected goes to Google’s cloud, which raises privacy and compliance concerns for some organizations (especially in regions with strict data protection rules).

Strengths: GA’s biggest advantage is that it’s readily available and widely understood. Many companies already use Google Analytics for their public websites, and thus leveraging it for SharePoint can mean no additional purchase and tapping into existing skills. It provides more granular data than SharePoint’s native analytics (for example, the ability to set up custom events or goals, which native tools don’t offer). The UI is user-friendly after initial setup, and Google continuously improves the platform with new analytical capabilities. GA4 in particular has event-based tracking that can be customized extensively. Additionally, no procurement process is needed for the free version – a team can experiment with GA quickly. For mobile and multiple device access, GA covers that out of the box. In summary, GA can serve as a quick, low-cost way to get better SharePoint usage data than the built-in reports, especially for page view counts and basic engagement metrics.

Weaknesses: For an internal platform like SharePoint, GA has several notable drawbacks. The setup can be non-trivial – unlike a public website where you just paste the snippet, with SharePoint Online you might need to deploy a SPFx extension to add the GA tracking code across sites, which requires some SharePoint development knowledge. Once running, GA will only capture what the browser sees. If a user opens a document in the Office Web App or does something that doesn’t trigger the GA script, that action is invisible to GA. GA also lacks context about SharePoint – for example, it can’t automatically tell which user or which SharePoint group the visitor belongs to (since you can’t send PII), and it doesn’t know about SharePoint concepts like site collections or lists unless you encode that in page URLs or custom dimensions. There is no native integration with Microsoft 365 (no tie-in to Power BI, no using Graph API data), so GA operates completely separately from your M365 ecosystem. Security and privacy is another concern: all usage data is stored in Google’s analytics cloud, and access control within GA is limited – essentially, anyone who is a GA admin or viewer will see all the SharePoint data, as GA doesn’t support the granular role-based access that some other tools do. Finally, if your SharePoint Online generates more than the free tier’s limit of hits, you could incur charges or need to upgrade to Google Analytics 360 (paid), which can be expensive. Companies also worry that Google might use the data in aggregate for its own purposes (though GA data is generally only used for providing the service, Google’s terms still give some pause as noted in the fine print). In essence, Google Analytics, while a powerful web analytics tool, is often considered a workaround in SharePoint analytics – useful to an extent, but not a perfect fit for enterprise intranet analytics needs, especially given the privacy and integration limitations.

Note: Some organizations opt for Matomo (formerly Piwik) as an alternative to GA. Matomo is an open-source web analytics platform that can be self-hosted, addressing the privacy issue. It similarly can track SharePoint pages via an injected script. While not as common as GA, it can be considered by enterprises needing web analytics features without data leaving their control. However, like GA, it requires custom setup and isn’t SharePoint-specific out of the box.

Other Third-Party Solutions: In addition to the above, there are other tools that sometimes come up in enterprise SharePoint analytics discussions. For example, Netwrix Auditor and Syskit Point are governance and auditing tools for Microsoft 365 that include some usage analytics (e.g., reports on user activity, site usage). These are geared more toward IT administrators (tracking things like permissions, activity logs for security/compliance) rather than understanding user engagement or content popularity. Similarly, migration or management tools like ShareGate include basic usage reporting to help cleanup or adoption efforts, but are not full-fledged analytics platforms. For the scope of enterprise user analytics and engagement optimization, the focus is generally on the dedicated analytics solutions discussed above.

How do Microsoft’s native analytics and third-party platforms stack up on key functionality? The table below summarizes the support for major features and highlights each platform’s strengths:

Feature / Capability	Microsoft 365 Built-in Analytics (SharePoint Site Usage, M365 Reports)	CardioLog Analytics (Intlock)	tyGraph (AvePoint)	Webtrends for SharePoint	HarePoint Analytics	Google Analytics (GA4)
Page Views & Basic Content Engagement	Yes – Shows page views, unique viewers, site visits, and popular content. However, limited to recent 90-180 days of data. Basic page-level metrics available (views, likes) but not much depth.	Yes – Tracks all page views and item views. No retention limit – can store long-term history. Offers popularity reports for sites, pages, documents, and even content interactions (views, downloads).	Yes – Captures page and document views across SharePoint. Focuses on adoption metrics (active sites, active users, files accessed). Data is typically aggregated daily. Good for trending usage over time (monthly/quarterly trends).	Yes – Tracks every page hit with high detail. Capable of long-term trending. Provides visitor-level logs of content viewed. Can report on most and least viewed content across the portal with no 90-day cutoff.	Yes – Records page visits and hits to SharePoint content. Maintains historical data in Azure (not limited to 90 days). Dashboards include content popularity and usage trends over time.	Yes – Measures page views, sessions, and basic engagement (time on page, bounce) on pages where GA script is present. Historical data is kept as long as property exists. Good at raw pageview counting and comparisons over time.
User Behavior Tracking (Clicks, Navigation, Time on Page)	Partial – OOTB shows “average time spent per user” on pages (recent feature) and basic referrer info for site entries. Does not track link clicks or detailed navigation paths between pages. No heatmaps or UI interaction logs natively.	Extensive – Tracks clicks on page elements (links, buttons), document opens, search queries, video plays, form submissions, etc.. Provides path analysis and funnel reports to see how users navigate. Supports heatmaps and click maps for pages (via add-ons) to visualize behavior.	Moderate – Derives navigation paths and usage from sequence of page views (from audit data). Can show which pages users typically visit in a session and how they traverse sites, but at a higher level than real-time click tracking. No built-in heatmap, but can analyze user flow through sites. Time on page is inferred from log intervals (less granular than a dedicated script).	Extensive – Provides click-through analysis and detailed paths (up to 20 clicks deep in a user session). Has heatmaps and click maps for SharePoint pages to show where users engage. Also offers “next page” and “previous page” analysis to map navigation patterns. Very strong in understanding user click behavior on the intranet.	Moderate – Captures referrer and exit page URLs for visits (shows how users enter/leave pages). Can log click events if configured, and reports on user paths through site content. Time-on-page and session length metrics are included. Lacks fancy visual heatmaps, but provides drill-downs on usage sequences.	Partial – Tracks clicks only if events are set up (e.g., via Google Tag Manager). Can show user flows through pages and drop-offs, but requires configuring GA funnels. Time on page is tracked and overall session paths can be visualized, but internal link clicks need custom tagging to get detailed reports. No native SharePoint context for navigation (treated as a normal website).
Search Analytics	Basic – Yes, via search usage reports: shows top search queries, queries with no results or no clicks, and query volume trends. These are available per site (modern search) and some info at tenant level (via Graph API). No built-in correlation between search and subsequent behavior.	Yes – Captures internal search terms and what results were clicked. Reports on searches with no results and poor outcomes, helping identify content gaps. Can track which content was found via search vs navigation. Search analytics are integrated with overall usage data (e.g., tying a failed search to a subsequent page visit).	Limited – Focus is more on usage of content, but if search events are logged (e.g., through audit logs), tyGraph can report on number of searches and perhaps trending queries. It may not have out-of-box detailed search term reports like dedicated search tools. Often organizations complement tyGraph with the built-in search reports for specific query analysis.	Yes – Provides reports for on-site search phrases, including which queries led to clicks and which didn’t. It can measure search exit rate and refine searches. This helps analyze how effective SharePoint’s search is and what users are looking for.	Yes – Built-in support for search analytics: reports on search requests, what results users clicked (follow-up paths), and even metrics like average search time taken by users. This gives insight into search efficiency and user satisfaction with search.	Partial – GA can record search queries if the SharePoint search page URL contains the query (with query string) or if custom events send the query. It can show what terms were searched and if users clicked subsequent pages (if configured as events). However, it doesn’t inherently know “no results” events or tie into SharePoint’s search result data. Custom scripting would be needed to flag when no results were returned.
Integration with Other Microsoft Tools (Power BI, Teams/Viva, Azure AD, etc.)	Native – The data is part of Microsoft 365, but integration is limited to what Microsoft provides (e.g., the Adoption Power BI pack covers SharePoint, Teams, etc. but only high-level). No ability to directly feed SharePoint’s usage data into other systems except via API exports (Graph API for usage or audit logs).	Good – Can integrate with Active Directory/Azure AD to use user profile attributes in reports (e.g., filter by department). Also offers an API and data export options to feed other BI tools (and even a Power BI suite of its own for advanced analytics). CardioLog’s add-ons cover Yammer (Viva Engage) and Teams analytics as separate modules, enabling a degree of cross-tool analysis. Not directly integrated with Dynamics 365 or others, but data can be exported.	Excellent – Specifically designed to integrate across Office 365 workloads (Teams, Yammer, OneDrive, Exchange) in the Enterprise version. Because it’s based in Power BI, it can integrate with other data sources easily. Many enterprises pull in HR data for richer insight. Also, being an AvePoint product, it may integrate with other AvePoint services (like their governance tools).	Moderate – Webtrends is a standalone analytics service. It doesn’t natively integrate with Power BI or other Microsoft tools, but data can be exported for use elsewhere. It’s focused on SharePoint (and web) analytics specifically. Integration with AD is present for user metadata (e.g., filtering by AD properties). Direct integration with things like Teams or Dynamics is not its purpose.	Good – Integrates with Power BI for visualization (data can be directly analyzed with Power BI Desktop or service). Uses Azure AD for user information and security (running in your tenant). Does not cover non-SharePoint workloads (focused on SharePoint Online only), but because you control the data, you could combine it with other data in your own data warehouse if desired.	Limited – Google Analytics is external to Microsoft’s ecosystem. No direct integration with Power BI (though data can be imported via GA APIs). No awareness of Teams, OneDrive, etc., since it only tracks web pages where its script runs. Cannot inherently use Azure AD info (and sending such info to GA is against policy). GA data stands alone, though third-party connectors exist to pull GA data into other BI tools.
Personalization & Data-Driven Content Delivery (using analytics for targeting or tailoring experiences)	Minimal – SharePoint Online uses the Microsoft Graph to show “Trending content” and recommendations, but this is largely behind-the-scenes and not configurable. There is no feature to directly use site usage analytics to personalize content on a page (apart from manually using popularity trends to adjust content). No native mechanism to target users based on their past behavior (beyond audience targeting which is rule-based, not usage-based).	Strong – CardioLog offers an “Engage” tool for behavioral targeting. This allows admins to send pop-up messages or surveys to users based on their SharePoint usage patterns (e.g., users who never visited page X can get a specific tooltip). This is a form of personalization driven by analytics. While CardioLog doesn’t automatically rearrange web parts for a user, the insights can be used by content owners to tailor intranet design. Also, the rich data can be fed into custom personalization engines if needed.	Indirect – tyGraph itself is read-only analytics, so it doesn’t provide a personalization engine. However, the insights (e.g., which departments use a site most) can inform content strategy. Since tyGraph is in Power BI, one could connect its data with custom applications. But out-of-the-box, tyGraph does not push any personalized content to SharePoint users; it’s focused on reporting.	Moderate – Webtrends is primarily analytics, but marketers have used it to inform personalization on sites. It doesn’t natively perform content targeting on SharePoint. However, knowing user navigation paths and popular content can guide intranet managers in placing important content. Some enterprises export Webtrends data to drive personalization rules in SharePoint (this requires custom development). No built-in personalization module.	Limited – HarePoint Analytics is for analysis and insights, not direct content delivery. It doesn’t have a feature to modify SharePoint content for specific users based on behavior. That said, by identifying, for example, content no one reads or common exit pages, admins can manually adjust pages for better engagement. The data could be used in custom solutions if built, but HarePoint doesn’t include a targeting tool.	None – Google Analytics is completely separate from SharePoint’s content rendering. It does not have any feature to push changes or personalized content to the site. Any use of GA data for personalization would be manual (analysts interpret GA results and then editors adjust content). GA is often used to optimize external websites through A/B testing, but on SharePoint Online, implementing such dynamic personalization would be complex and not supported by GA out-of-box.
Visualization & Reporting Interface	Basic – Provided via SharePoint site usage page (simple graphs) and admin center (static charts). The M365 Power BI Adoption pack offers nicer visuals but are pre-defined. Limited customization of built-in reports (beyond choosing time ranges). Export options exist (Excel/CSV for some data). Overall, easy to access but not very customizable or interactive.	Rich – Has its own web interface for dashboards plus the ability to create custom reports. Lots of chart types and the ability to schedule reports via email. Non-technical users find the interface reasonably friendly. Also supports integration with Power BI for advanced visuals. In short, both default dashboards and custom BI are available.	Rich – Visualization is through Power BI, providing interactive filtering, drilling, and the full array of Power BI visuals. Users can customize reports or create new ones if they have Power BI skills. Sharing dashboards with stakeholders is straightforward via the Power BI service. The look and feel depend on Power BI’s capabilities, which are enterprise-grade.	Rich – Webtrends has a robust web-based analytics portal. Users can create custom dashboards, use templates, and view data in tables, line charts, heatmaps, etc. It also provides Excel export and other formats. The interface has a lot of options (which is powerful but can overwhelm new users). Webtrends is known for strong reporting once configured properly.	Good – Comes with ready-to-use dashboards and supports custom report creation. Integrates with Power BI which means any visualization available in Power BI can be used. Also provides its own UI for quick stats and the ability to drill down by clicking on report elements. You can schedule email summaries to stakeholders. Visualization is a strong suit, though full flexibility might require using Power BI.	Good – Google Analytics’ interface is highly polished for web reporting. It offers real-time dashboards, customizable reports, and data exploration through its web UI. Visualizations like line graphs, geomaps, treemaps, etc., are built-in. GA also allows building custom reports and dashboards within its interface. For many users, GA’s reporting GUI is one of its attractions. However, for SharePoint-specific needs, some data might not be there to visualize (as noted). Export to CSV/PDF is possible for offline analysis or integration into other tools.

Table: Comparison of SharePoint Online analytics options – built-in vs various third-party solutions – across key functionality areas. (✅=supported natively, ⚠️=partially or with limitations, ❌=not supported)

As seen above, Microsoft’s built-in analytics cover the basics (✅ page views, simple usage stats, basic search info) but lack depth in user behavior tracking and advanced use cases (⚠️ or ❌ in those areas). Third-party tools significantly extend capabilities: for example, CardioLog and Webtrends offer rich user behavior tracking like click analytics and path analysis that OOTB lacks, and tyGraph integrates data across multiple Microsoft 365 services which native SharePoint reports don’t do. Each third-party has its particular strengths – CardioLog excels in SharePoint-specific depth and actionable insights (even enabling targeted campaigns), tyGraph shines in cross-platform analytics and ease of use via Power BI, Webtrends provides powerful web-style analytics tailor-made for SharePoint, HarePoint offers a balanced feature set with high security, and Google Analytics brings general web analytics strength with cost advantages but with trade-offs in integration and privacy.

In practice, many enterprises start with Microsoft’s out-of-the-box analytics and only move to a third-party solution if the native insights prove insufficient. For basic needs and smaller environments, the built-in SharePoint Online analytics and the Microsoft 365 Usage reports often suffice. They are the default choice due to zero additional cost and simple access.

However, in larger SharePoint Online deployments or when organizations have specific adoption goals, third-party analytics are common. A few tools have emerged as de facto standards in enterprise SharePoint Online environments:

• CardioLog Analytics – A popular choice for organizations seeking deep intranet analytics. Its comprehensive feature set and SharePoint-centric design make it a go-to for intranet managers who need to understand detailed user engagement. It’s widely adopted in enterprises that require on-premises data hosting or advanced customization. Despite the cost, its rich insights into SharePoint usage and user behavior have made it a leading solution.

• Webtrends for SharePoint – Historically one of the most widely used analytics platforms for SharePoint in large enterprises. Many Fortune 500 companies (and even Microsoft internally) have used Webtrends to measure SharePoint portals. It’s considered a benchmark for SharePoint analytics capabilities (often cited for its powerful features like heatmaps and deep path analysis). While some newer customers opt for different tools, Webtrends still has a strong installed base in enterprises that have used it for years.

• tyGraph (AvePoint) – An increasingly popular solution, especially as Office 365 as a whole grows. tyGraph is often adopted by companies that want a unified analytics approach across Office 365. It has become something of a standard in organizations focusing on user adoption and productivity metrics, and those that favor leveraging Microsoft’s Power BI stack for analytics. Its partnership with AvePoint (a major Microsoft 365 ISV) and emphasis on actionable analytics resonate with enterprise customers. In the Microsoft 365 community, tyGraph is frequently recommended for insights across SharePoint, Teams, and Yammer together.

• HarePoint Analytics – In enterprises concerned with cloud data privacy, HarePoint’s in-tenant solution is a common choice. It’s also well-known in the SharePoint on-premises world, and that reputation carries into the online space for those looking for a straightforward yet secure analytics tool. While not as universally recognized as CardioLog or Webtrends, it’s considered a solid, enterprise-friendly option (especially in Azure-centric organizations).

• Google Analytics – Surprisingly, despite its limitations for intranet use, GA is found in many enterprise SharePoint Online environments, at least in a supplemental role. Its zero price tag and familiarity make it a default “first attempt” for analytics in some cases. Enterprises that already have marketing analytics teams might use GA to track their intranet because they can reuse skills and even compare internal vs. external site patterns. Over time, some outgrow GA due to its blind spots (lack of user-specific data, etc.), but others continue using it for basic trends while using Microsoft’s native reports for specifics like user identities (in audit logs). GA is not the most powerful solution for SharePoint, but it is indeed one of the most common due to its ubiquity.

In conclusion, SharePoint Online analytics is an evolving landscape. Microsoft’s built-in analytics have improved and will cover many core needs, but for enterprises aiming to maximize their digital workplace’s effectiveness, third-party tools provide the granular data and advanced capabilities to truly understand user behavior and drive data-informed improvements. Tools like CardioLog, Webtrends, and tyGraph are often seen as the enterprise standard-bearers for SharePoint analytics, each with a slightly different focus area (deep SharePoint insights, web-style analytics power, cross-suite adoption metrics, etc.). The choice of tool often comes down to an organization’s priorities: whether it’s depth of SharePoint-specific analysis, breadth across Microsoft 365, on-premises data control, or cost considerations. What’s clear is that having robust analytics in place – whether native or third-party – is key to creating a personalized, engaging, and continuously improving SharePoint Online intranet experience for users.

Sources: The information above is drawn from Microsoft’s official documentation and community guidance on SharePoint Online analytics, as well as comparisons and reviews of leading SharePoint analytics products. Notable references include Microsoft support articles on SharePoint usage and search reports, expert commentary on the limitations of out-of-box analytics, and independent reviews of third-party tools (e.g., CardioLog vs. HarePoint vs. Webtrends) highlighting their features and use cases. These illustrate the range of options available to enterprises seeking to measure and enhance SharePoint Online engagement.