Peter's Blog

Redefining the Impossible

Statcounter stats

Statcounter stats

Submitted by Peter on Wed Dec 14 2005 09:12 over 4 years ago

Since I started with statcounter very nearly a year ago, it tells me my site has served up 100,214 pages to 72,521 visitors.

I have quickly become bored with Google Analytics: I think it's appeal is more for marketing departments and powerpoint/pie chart enthusiasts. I like the raw detail that statcounter gives me in an easily accessable way. I can see what people are searching for and sometimes it even inspires me to update articles to be more useful.

I still think their counting is buggy: returning visitors seems unreliable, as if page refreshing counts as a return visit, so I take it with a pinch of salt and follow the trends. The numbers are roughly on a par with google analytics.

Statcounter is easier to install, it can go anywhere on the page, Google Analytics has to go in the header. For drupal this means editing the page template rather than sticking it in a block.

Filed under: drupal google statcounter

5 Comments

xavier Says:

Fri Dec 30 2005 02:54 over 4 years ago

I've started using statcounter too, and seem to like it better than sitemeter so far. I do like the raw display of data in a simple and easy to read format also. But I have to wait a while before I can definitely say statcounter is better than sitemeter.

xavodim.com

zoenupercom Says:

Sat Dec 31 2005 00:24 over 4 years ago

I've just registered a statcounter account and pasted the code to my web pages. Traffic analysis loooks pretty cool.

zoe.nuper.com

fedorajim Says:

Fri Jan 06 2006 02:58 over 4 years ago

What file did you edit to allow statcounter to show?

Peter Says:

Fri Jan 06 2006 08:52 over 4 years ago

How you install the statcounter code depends on how your web site is set up. If you are editing regular html pages then you can put the code anywhere between the body tags, maybe just before the final </body> tag. You would have to edit every html file on your site that you wanted tracked by statcounter.

I use the drupal content management system on my site: all data is stored in a database rather than discrete files. I defined a block and put the code in there. The block is shown on the right side of every page, it is called 'Stuff'. The statcounter code displays the statcounter graphic.

This is where content management systems are better than static html files, the content management system takes care of the boilerplate stuff, adding the same things to every page automatically.

Peter

Matt Farina Says:

Sat Jan 19 2008 20:55 over 2 years ago

I've used both Google Analytics and Statcounter over the years. Here's a couple things I've learned...

1) You can have google analytics in the footer of your page. I prefer it here and the Google Analytics module helps you with this. Plus, it can have certain roles where it doesn't count them. So, my stats don't include my visits... I like this.

2) For most of the ways your average person uses them there is no difference. We are interested in page counts, visitors counts, and other basic metrics like this.

Just a few things from my experiences.

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