Stat Counters - Good or Bad

It's usually a good idea. Free and easy these days, and gives you an idea of how many people you're writing to.

I think it's a bit of both: useful and an ego thing. I like knowing how many people, on average, are visiting my blog each day, and seeing how long they stay lets me know if I'm capturing their attention right off the bat or if they just run in and out. I also get a weird thrill out of seeing more than 5 people visiting and staying for more and 5 seconds...

The downside...I now know that my cat gets twice as many daily visitors than I do...

I hadn't even thought of having a stats counter on my blog so I can't really say one way or the other. I can see how it could be useful on some level, though.

The whole point that my blog is public is because I wanted it to be available for others to read. I don't know I think I find comfort in knowing that there's at least one person reading my ramblings. I like having a stats counter. Maybe it is an ego thing. I don't know and don't really care.

I don't usually get many comments on my blog. Ok, so, I don't think I've gotten one comment on my writing blog, but having a stats counter lets me know at least someone is reading it.

I have more than one way to watch traffic on my blog and I love all of 'em. It's not completely narcissism, I like to see if one post grabs more attention than others - maybe it's the links? Maybe it's the topic? I look at the trends mostly. And yeah, it's just fun.

Site Meter tells me what the 'entry' page and 'exit' pages are as well as ISP numbers, which I think is a good thing to be able to capture if I start getting some, well, unsavory visitors let's say.

Also, I can see who is just using the 'next blog' feature and who's visiting from other sites (like here or someone else's blog). That's fun too.

I like them too, for all the reasons Dawn mentions. Plus, it's worth the extra $2/month to me to see who's wearing underwear and who isn't.

aka eraser said:

I like them too, for all the reasons Dawn mentions. Plus, it's worth the extra $2/month to me to see who's wearing underwear and who isn't.

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Dawno said:

I have more than one way to watch traffic on my blog and I love all of 'em. It's not completely narcissism, I like to see if one post grabs more attention than others - maybe it's the links? Maybe it's the topic? I look at the trends mostly. And yeah, it's just fun.

Site Meter tells me what the 'entry' page and 'exit' pages are as well as ISP numbers, which I think is a good thing to be able to capture if I start getting some, well, unsavory visitors let's say.

Also, I can see who is just using the 'next blog' feature and who's visiting from other sites (like here or someone else's blog). That's fun too.

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What site did you use to download your counters, Dawno? From your post, it looks like you are recommending a counter called Site Meter. I'm cautious about downloading unless I trust the site so would appreciate your recommendation.

Thanks!

I use statcounter.com , free and lots of stats--can use a visible counter or run invisibly.

veinglory said:

I use statcounter.com , free and lots of stats--can use a visible counter or run invisibly.

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Thanks, I'll check them out. I was just thinking yesterday that I'd like a counter on my blog and here you are with information!! Thanks for the tip.

ProsperitySue said:

What site did you use to download your counters, Dawno? From your post, it looks like you are recommending a counter called Site Meter. I'm cautious about downloading unless I trust the site so would appreciate your recommendation.

Thanks!

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I basically went to some other blogs, saw what they used and went to those sites. I don't necessarily recommend any of them, I'm just having fun using different types. I see Site Meter on quite a few blogs, really don't know if that makes it trustworthy or not. I haven't had any apparent issues from using it.

Let's see if there are some 'big' blogs that use Site Meter...Daily Kos uses it, it's one of the most visited blogs around. Redstate.org, one of the most popular conservative sites uses it, too. (I went there in the interest of fair and balanced reporting ) MakingLight - a great hangout for cerebral exercise and fascinating comments, where our own John D. Macdonald often posts, doesn't appear to have a site stat counter - so perhaps it's invisible. The #2 most popular blog right this instant on Technorati is Post Secret. It's using StatCounter.

Boing Boing (the #1 most popular blog - on Technorati) uses something I don't recognize - AWStats from SourceForge, which looks very powerful, but for a personal blog, maybe a bit of overkill? They also have Feedburner for subscriptions (not a site stat counter - but gives a way for people to subscribe and let you know who they are - I have that on my site as well).

I'm no expert on any of this - I'm an enthusiastic amateur, who's learning as I go along, so I don't want to let on that my opinion has much weight. There are members here who have a lot more experience and I hope that they'll share of it.

If you're going to have a stat counter, make it so only you can see it. Unless you have millions of people hitting your site, it just screams "amateur".

Bill.

Google Analytics is utterly hosed at the moment. It's a powerful system (Urchin, rebadged), if they ever get it working, but they've had nothing but problems with it since the launch.

Boing Boing (the #1 most popular blog - on Technorati) uses something I don't recognize - AWStats from SourceForge, which looks very powerful, but for a personal blog, maybe a bit of overkill?

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AWStats is usually provided as standard with hosting packages - that and/or the godawful Webalizer, but you can't really install it yourself unless you have total access to the system.

A good stats program is completely invisible to the end user - they usually process the logs that the server itself creates and display them in a more usable format. The alternative, used by Google Analytics/Mint and the like is a scrap of code that the user's browser processes when they get the page. It doesn't grab everyone, but it's much less vulnerable to referrer spam and other scripts - AWStats is next to useless once you start getting swamped by that stuff.

One really useful thing about having a good stats package is that it doesn't just tell you how many people read you, but where they're coming from - much easier to see if people are talking about you/your content.

I don't get the whole thing about the stat counter being invisible - but I'm sure that's because 1) I am a total amateur and 2) I just do this whole blogging thing for fun and the joy of sharing with the teeny group of folks who read me.

There's just no reason for it to be visible, or in most cases to give everyone in the word access to your stats. It just looks more professional.

whenever I install a blog it's as a component of a whole site, and statcounter gets installed on the blog and every other page. For the site owner it can be both fun and a useful indicator of their readership's likes - if you suddenly get a rush of hits when writing about peruvian nose flutes, but it drops off when you move on to Venezuelan toe-harps, you know what to do.

For me as the site designer, tracking the traffic across the site tells me which pages work, which are unpopular and may want either removing or improved content, whether the navigation system is explicit enough, etc.

But I have to agree - visible counters on site? Sooo 1980's!

It's bad. Makes me more obsessed than I already am...