BlogHer - How to track visitors to your blog - Comments

help WHERE

feMOMhist — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 14:32:06 -0600

do you insert the statcounter code? I use it on a blogspot blog, but not sure how to insert it in to my blogHer blog!

Stat Counter + Google Analytics

JennaHatfield — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 21:17:09 -0500

We use both statcounter and google analytics. It gives us all the stuff we need to know. One without the other leaves SOMETHING out so using them together works well!

Family Living; Hatfield Style - Our Family Blog.
Birth/First Parent Blog
The Chronicles of Munchkin Land

They all do, to an extent. I

kperfetto — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 15:22:24 -0500

They all do, to an extent. I switched blog providers, and thought that was the only reason for the slight decrease in traffic, but I think moving from sitemeter to statcounter is part of that. Actually, I think sitemeter gives slightly inflated numbers.

Available Light & Five Dollar Radio

Different stats

Virginia DeBolt — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 13:12:57 -0500

I've noticed that Feedburner and the Wordpress stat counters vary widely in their estimations of how much traffic you are getting. One wonders if they are all counting the same things.

http://www.webteacher.ws/
http://first50.wordpress.com/

The Elephant

Virginia DeBolt — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 13:10:51 -0500

If you really want to slice, dice, segment and analyze your traffic, your interest, your hottest topics, the Google Analytics does give you abundant informaion.

http://www.webteacher.ws/
http://first50.wordpress.com/

I was going to say

Virginia DeBolt — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 13:09:38 -0500

to Jennb01 that most people who use Stat Counter love it, and you come along and say you didn't. But I've sure seen a lot of people who use it recommend it to others when they ask about how to track visitors.

http://www.webteacher.ws/
http://first50.wordpress.com/

The Elephant

moddivorce — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 12:15:45 -0500

I use Google Analytics and like the amount of detail it provides, including where the visitors came from (e.g. search engines, referrals, etc.) as well as there geographical location.

Helene
The Modern Woman's Divorce Guide
http://themodernwomansdivorceguide.com/blog

StatCounter. I gave up on

kperfetto — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 11:39:50 -0500

StatCounter. I gave up on Sitemeter after a week-long outage last March. I love the little MyBlogLog widget that lets you see your recent visitors/stalkers. I was leery at first, but you can always opt to be "invisible."

Available Light & Five Dollar Radio

I still love the quick daily snapshot

Alanna Kellogg — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 10:02:20 -0500

from MyBlogLog but am dropping it now that I've converted to Google Analytics. I've also used Site Meter. Interestingly enough, they create different pageview counts -- by 15 - 50%. Go figure.

Crazy Egg is interesting but they're crazy eggs to think that the pricing structure will gain traction in the marketplace. It's way too expensive for a blog of any size -- we're talking about, say, Crazy-Egg only expense 10% of ad revenue -- show me THAT ROI.

Alanna Kellogg, A Veggie Venture

SiteMeter?

debra roby — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 08:57:12 -0500

I haveused SiteMeter for several years, and I'm starting to compare google analytics to see which tells me more useful information. Not that I have enough readers to really need much.

Debra
A Stitch In Time
Deb's Daily Distractions

I use and love stat counter.

Jennb01 — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 08:36:49 -0500

I use and love stat counter. I use feed burner as well, but stat counter is the easiest I have found and gives really accurate real time information.
:)

How to track visitors to your blog

Virginia DeBolt — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 05:15:26 -0500

What are you doing to track visitors to your blog? Many blog software packages, such as Wordpress, come with basic stat tracking as part of the package. If you want to go beyond that, I have five suggestions for your consideration. There are more options, if none of these seem perfect for you. These are a starting point.

The first option is Feedburner. Feedburner is free and does quite a lot for you. Feedburner tracks the number of blog subscribers, counts visitors and provides individual post stats. It also helps with advertising. Teli Adlam from OptiNiche.com has a free PDF handbook for using Feedburner that will help you learn all about its possibilities. Feedburner is free.

At Have a Mint, they are promoting a system called Mint that helps you identify what parts of your site are most interesting to visitors. They describe the software.

Mint is an extensible, self-hosted web site analytics program. Its interface is an exercise in simplicity. Visits, referrers, popular pages and searches can all be taken in at a glance on Mint's flexible dashboard.

There's a one-time fee of $30 for Mint. (This is not to be confused with another software product called Mint that is used for personal finance.) Unless you are hosting your blog on your own domain, Mint may not work for you. If you are using wordpress or blogspot free hosting, you can't use it. You need access to your own server so a database can be added for it. Here's Mint's description of the requirements.

The third option is the free Stat Counter. According to Stat Counter, they provide,

A free yet reliable invisible web tracker, highly configurable hit counter and real-time detailed web stats. Insert a simple piece of our code on your web page or blog and you will be able to analyse and monitor all the visitors to your website in real-time!

Many people like the free Stat Counter. Some of them indicated their approval at Stumble Upon, including Kathysue. Kathysue's site is AZhttp, an Arizona Internet marketing firm.

MetriServ Web Analytics charges a monthly fee based on traffic. MetriServ would work on a blogspot or wordpress.com hosted blog. They claim,

For maximum accuracy, we collect web metrics directly from the browser of the visitor and store them on our servers in aggregated form. No communication with your servers is needed. All you have to do is insert a single line of JavaScript code on the pages you want to monitor.

MetriServ company offers a free Windows Vista Gadget and Mac OS X Widget Service that include basic web statistics (today's pageviews and visits). The range of information from their free service is limited, but you get the convenience of having a Gadget or Widget on your desktop.

The fifth and final suggestion is Crazy Egg. At Crazy Egg, they brag about displaying the stats in "stunning visuals," so it may appeal to the visually minded over the mathematically minded. You can get Crazy Egg services free for up to 5000 visits a month (and 4 pages). After that there's a payment scale based on your traffic. Crazy Egg's most interesting feature is what they call a heat map. The heat map shows you which parts of your page got the most visitor action. You can quickly see if your advertising is getting the attention you hoped it would with Crazy Egg.

The anonymous blogger at Web Podge reviewed Crazy Egg and stated that it didn't seem to provide much more information than Google Analytics.

Google Analytics is the elephant in the living room that i have left unmentioned in the list of five options. It's a bonus option to consider. I just couldn't stop at five.

Your stats await.