Site Trackers

[Kat]

Can someone suggest some of the better site trackers on the market? Also is it true that if the tracker is at the bottom of the page, the stats will not be as accurate as they would be if the tracker was at the top of the page? (I read this somewhere.)

Thanks in advance!

[TWTCommish]

I don't believe that is true...it might just be a marketing ploy of sorts to get their count more visible.

I *HIGHLY* recommend http://www.sitemeter.com - tons of features, accurate, lots of colored bars and graphs. I've only had to email tech support once while using it for over 2 years in 5 different sites, and the guy replied in 10 minutes.

And best of all: you can customize it to make it invisible!

[Aidan Bahta]

It is true. Some people press stop before the browser connects to the tracker site. If this happens, you won't see the hit. So the higher in the HTML (not the page, but the source code), the more accurate your stats will be.

Nothing is more accurate than log files, I highly recommend them.

But, SiteMeter is probably the best remotely hosted tracker around.

[mjames]

Originally posted by TWTCommish
I don't believe that is true...it might just be a marketing ploy of sorts to get their count more visible.

I *HIGHLY* recommend http://www.sitemeter.com - tons of features, accurate, lots of colored bars and graphs. I've only had to email tech support once while using it for over 2 years in 5 different sites, and the guy replied in 10 minutes.

And best of all: you can customize it to make it invisible!

Yes, I second that! I've been using SiteMeter on Sports Central for a while now and experience no problems whatsoever. Now it's even better that it's invisible.

[Addto]

My personal preference is webtrendslive It can offer you many features though sitemeter is not bad.

[Kat]

Originally posted by abahta

Nothing is more accurate than log files, I highly recommend them.

Thanks for all of the replies...

One question about log files...I've just started pulling them each week, but my server (Mindspring) doesn't list Unique IP's (or maybe I don't know where to look.

It just has # page requests, and # of bytes sent (plus the referrer info)

According to the logs, I'm getting @4000 page requests a day on a 5 page site...

Are the page request #'s important?

(btw, heading over to check out sitemeter right now!)

[Kat]

Ignore my question above...It's been answered since I installed sitemeter yesterday...now here's another question...do I need to install sitemeter on every page of the site, or is the index page sufficient?

Thanks

[Elledan]

Originally posted by Kat
Ignore my question above...It's been answered since I installed sitemeter yesterday...now here's another question...do I need to install sitemeter on every page of the site, or is the index page sufficient?

Thanks

You must put the code on every page of the site if you want stats of the whole site. If you put the counter only on the index page, you won't see the visitors that reach your site through an other page than the index page (via a search engine, for example).

I've put the SiteMeter code on my site on every page. If I hadn't done this, I wouldn't have seen the remaining 115 visitors

[Kat]

Originally posted by Elledan
You must put the code on every page of the site if you want stats of the whole site. [/B]

That's kind of what I was thinking...thanks for the confirmation!

[prequel]

advice add the counter to a text file and use server sided includes to call it on each page if you can... says trouble when you need to replace the counter

[patricknw]

The best thing for sure is a good log file. When selecting my web host, I made sure they gave me access to my access.log and error.log, that they logged referrers, OS, browsers, etc.

Combined with Webtrends Enterprise Suite, it can't be beat.

My two cents worth..

[Aidan Bahta]

I like OpenWebScope - a free Windows-based logfile analyzer. It exports great reports.

I think it is at http://www.openwebscope.com/

Also, http://www.faststats.com/ has a great logifle analyzer, but you have to pay for it.

[Elledan]

Originally posted by prequel
advice add the counter to a text file and use server sided includes to call it on each page if you can... says trouble when you need to replace the counter

Great tip! I might use it for my next sites