"Nevertheless, I can't wondering, if only for curiosity's sake, whether there's a way that would enable me to answer ctabuk's question more precisely".
There are a lot of resources to track visitors to your site. WebCEO is one.
You may know these.
http://www.deep-software.com/?ref=ggl&cmp=7
http://awstats.sourceforge.net/
You find more tools on my site, more precisely
http://multifinanceit.com/it/security/security.htm
If you choose "Links"
http://multifinanceit.com/it/security/links.htm
and scroll down to "Log analysis" alternatively
CTRL + F + Log analysis
you find some other useful tools.
Related page search
CTRL + F + Tracking
Then, how would I analyze that material in more detail? Even if Excel or a spread sheet is not statistical software, the statistical functions should be more than good enough to get a more professional overview / analysis.
If you do not have the time to do the analysis yourself, ask a student at an IT school / university to do the analysis. It may even be used as a Bachelor / Master thesis in IT or information science.
AND THAT SHOULD BE A VERY USEFUL AND PROFITABLE ANALYSIS / PROJECT.
Simple question
How much traffic do you get from Natural Searches? Most.
How much from PPC/Adwords?
Only use Mamma.com hard mapped KW for "Institutional investor". That does not send heavy traffic.
How much from Direct Mail/ Advertising?
Do not use it.
More general:
Heavy users US Commercial and US Education. Why US Education? May be because, if you look at my organization of links, it is organized for
1. People seeking financial information.
2. People seeking IT information for their Web Business. Very much on Digital Ad and branding.
Based on 10 years experience (collection of links). So it is a "subject organised link collection" in addition to a news service.
US Military also find it useful, may be because of my experience working with people "from MIT",
http://www.intex.com/ and
http://www.intex.com/homepage/Troll.htm
Excellent statistical software that may be used for most purposes, even marketing research if you know how to use it.
In a periode, they crawled my site many times a day.