StatCounter

I've been blogging in some form or fashion for five years now. When I moved to blogger blogs from rememory.com in 2004 I discovered the wonderful world of HTML (I am slow on the uptake). I saw stat counters on other peoples web pages and decided I wanted one for myself. I can't remember how I came to choose StatCounter, whether it was by seeing one on another blog (likely) or through a google search (just as likely).

I have used StatCounter on all my blogs since rememory, either visibly or not. The current incarnation of the Hen House has an invisible tracker, but if you pay attention when the page loads, or you check the source code, you'll see it's there.

I'm not obsessed with stats. I used to be, but these days I just pop in to see how often my known peeps drop by. It gives me a little warm glow when I see their ip addresses each day.

StatCounter has a couple of great features. As well as an overview of numbers of visits per day, shown by a handy and easy to read graph, the free version which is the only one I have ever used has a usage cap of recording the 100 most recent visits. Older visits are lost to the ethers, but that's not a big deal on a personal web page. It shows referrers, ip addresses, entry and exit pages, how often that visitor has been and their place in the world.





I am particularly fond of the little flags of each country. This is because I am just a bit of a dag.

I received an email today from the StatCounter team. While they do use goooogle ads at the top of the screen, there is no other advertising on the site. They make their money by offering bigger log sizes and more professional features, not by advertising. The email they sent advised me that they had been approached by a marketing bunch who wanted to pay them to allow their cookies to be snuck into our computers and the computers of those who visit the web sites of StatCounter customers.

StatCounter resolutely said no. And they wanted us to know that at least one of the other big counter providers said yes.

So, if you aren't sure if your provider has your best interests at heart and that bothers you, switch. I realise this isn't appealing to those who are a bit attached to that number at the bottom (side, top, centre...WHATEVER) of their web page, but quite frankly, surreptitious loading of cookies onto peoples computers to drag more money out of our arses is not that appealing either.

Just sayin'.

Update: Aodhan from the StatCounter team has nicely pointed out to me that you can set your new StatCounter on any number you so desire, so you don't have to lose your current hit count to the change. Hooray for them :)