Skip to content

It’s All in the Numbers

I know that one of the first things on my mind after starting my blog a little over a year ago was, “is anyone actually reading this thing? Or am I just talking to myself?”. It’s hard to know – especially since not every reader leaves a comment to let you know that they visited your post. Blog traffic comes from many different places – search engines, links from comments you’ve left on other blogs’ posts, or direct links from other blogs or websites. And there are any number of reasons to want to find out where your blog’s traffic is coming from – and who is viewing your site.

Whether you are gathering statistics for marketing purposes, or just wanting to keep an eye on who is reading what you write, there are numerous sites out there that will analyze your blog and give you different types of statistics on how many visitors you have, where they are coming from, how long they’re staying on your site, etc. They offer analysis tools as well so you can look at charts, tables or graphs to see how your blog traffic changes over time. Some of them have a cost to use, but there are basic tools available just for free. A few of the more popular ‘stat’ counter sites are Site Meter, StatCounter, and BlogPatrol.

Each of them works in a similar fashion – you add a piece of HTML code somewhere in your blog template, and then within a short time you can start checking your stats. They have a ‘widget’ or graphic that you can display on your site to show off your numbers as well.


Choosing a stat counter

The first thing that you need to do is choose which counter you want to use and register for an account on the site. Although most of them give you the same general information, there are some differences. For example, if you want to find out the specific IP address for your visitors and not just the general domain they’re on, you will have to upgrade to a paid account with either Site Meter or StatCounter, but BlogPatrol gives you the IP address for your 25 most recent visitors for free. Look over all of the features available to decide which counter will work the best for you. You’ll also want to see which of the sites has an interface and design that appeals to you as well, since you’ll probably spend a decent amount of time there.

Here are some quick basics on setting up Site Meter, StatCounter and BlogPatrol.


Setting up Site Meter

image

Once you’ve set up your account, login to the site. You’ll see a ‘dashboard’ page with your Site Summary. Obviously at this point there isn’t any information available, so you’ll need to add the code to your site so that Site Meter can start tracking your visitors.

Step 1 – From the Site Summary page, click on ‘manager’ from the top menu. This brings you to the overview page that details your account type, and gives you options to change any of your settings.

Step 2 – On the left side of the manager overview page, click on ‘HTML code’. There are two different types of code available for you to place on your site. The JavaScript HTML can be more difficult to place on your blog, but it gives you an added benefit of being able to track the unique URL that your visitors came from before heading to your site. Site Meter recommends to try this option first, and then if unsuccessful, then you can try the Regular HTML code instead.

Step 3 – Site Meter offers detailed instructions on how to add the code to most of the popular blogging platforms – just click where indicated and choose the blogging platform that you use from the list. Then follow the specific step-by-step directions for your platform to install the code.

image

Step 4 – Once you have the code installed, there are several ways in which you can customize Site Meter so that it works best for you. You can set it to ignore visits from your own computer (so you don’t artificially inflate your stats when you read or check things on your own site), choose the privacy level of your statistics to either share or hide your numbers from the world, and you can add in previous visitor numbers from before installing Site Meter if you know them (useful if you’re changing from a different stat counter and don’t want to lose those visitors in your total count).

Step 5 – Now comes the fun part, checking your numbers! By clicking on ‘statistics’ from the top menu, you can see total numbers for your site, or you can choose any of the various options available on the left menu bar or at the bottom of the page to see more detailed information about where your visitors are coming from, where they go when they leave your site, what type of web browser they’re using or what geographic location they are at, just as a few examples. Spend some time checking out the various options and see which information is the most important for you.


Setting up StatCounter

image

Step 1 – Click on ‘Register Now’ from the homepage and create your account. Once your account has been created, you are prompted to ‘Proceed and create a project’. Click to add the information for the site you are setting up the counter for, as prompted.

Step 2 – Once your project is created, the site will prompt you to ‘Configure and install code’. After clicking, you are presented with several options for the type of widget or graphic to display on your site. You can choose to display the visitor number for each page on your site, or not to display them at all, if you prefer to keep the information private. Choose the option that you prefer, and then you can customize the display as well. Unlike Site Meter, you can choose not to display a graphic at all if you don’t want to.

Step 3 – Next, you are taken to a page where you can choose your blogging platform, or just get HTML-only code (not recommended since it limits the types of statistics tracked). You are then given the specific code to copy and instructions for where to put it, based on the website platform you chose.

Step 4 – Once the code is installed, then you can go to ‘My Projects’ when you’re logged into the StatCounter site and click on the relevant project to see your stats. As with Site Meter, check out the various types of information available and see which information is the most useful for your purposes.


Setting up BlogPatrol

image

Step 1 – Click on ‘Get your FREE counter now!’ from the home page. This will take you to an interactive sign-up form to register with the site. You are given options to choose from many different design styles for a counter to display on your site, and can choose some default options here as well, such as to ban/ignore your own IP address (it will even find out what your IP address is if you don’t know it).

Step 2 – Your code is generated and displayed. If you have a Blogger or Typepad site, then you can get detailed instructions for how to add the code, but instructions for other platforms are not available (yet). However, if you are familiar with how to add a widget to your site, then you should be able to add the code in easily.

Step 3 – Once you have the code installed on your site, you can view your statistics by logging into the BlogPatrol members area.

Good luck and happy counting!

9 thoughts on “It’s All in the Numbers”

  1. Sitemeter is having MAJOR problems – something is wrong with the javascript and any blog that has sitemeter attached will NOT open presently – the only way to fix it is to log into your layout and remove sitemeter. You won’t even be able to view your own blog if it has sitermeter attached, but you can fix it through the dashboard. HTH

  2. You didn’t mention Google Analytics. Is that a different animal? I have Site Meter and it seems to work fine, but I recently added Google Analytics. I’m looking forward to seeing how it compares.

  3. This might be a stupid question, but what is “general domain”?

    StatCounter does show IP addresses (for the last 500 visitors), but I may be getting my terms mixed up.

Comments are closed.