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Early in the life of the Web, counters were fairly popular. A
counter is a simple script that records the number of visitors to a
site in a text file or database and then displays the total, either
textually or graphically, on the Website. You still find them on
some amateur pages, but for the most part, their use has died out
-- primarily because site owners wanted more complex information
about their traffic, but also because these counters have come to
be seen as unprofessional.
Now most professional or commercial sites use tracking software.
Tracking software tells you more than just the number of visitors
-- it can break visitor statistics down by date, time, browser,
page viewed, referrer, and countless other values. Trackers are so
named because they can more or less detail for you the path a
visitor takes through your Website, so they do more than just count
your traffic: they track it. You can choose from three main types
of tracking software -- let's look at your options.
The Three Flavors of Tracking Software
1. Remote Tracking Services
The easiest type of tracking to install, and therefore the most
popular, is remote tracking. These tracking services house all the
traffic recording scripts and reports on their own servers, which
you can log into to check your stats. The recording itself is
accomplished through javascript that is placed on your page(s).
Despite their ease of use, this type of service is the worst,
for a variety of reasons. Often, it is inaccurate: because the
traffic recording relies upon a connection to a remote server (a
server that's likely bogged down), many of your visitors may not be
recorded because requests simply time out. Additionally, the
services' reliance upon javascript means that it fails to record
visits by users who don't have javascript enabled. This is a big
issue -- search engine spiders don't use javascript, so one of the
key benefits of analyzing your traffic (knowing when you've been
spidered) is overlooked by these services. Also, remote trackers
often require you to place a button or graphic on your site in
exchange for the free use of their service, which is not ideal for
most site owners.
So try to avoid using these services unless you don't have the
ability or expertise to execute tracking scripts of any kind on
your own server.
Examples:
2. Logging Programs
This is my preferred method of traffic analysis. Logging
programs are scripts that you install on your server, which then
generate both log files (either in flat files or a database), and
reports. I prefer this type of program over a log analysis system
(discussed below) because logging programs afford the site owner
more control -- you decide what is logged and what isn't, and only
track those pages you want to track.
The downside to doing this is that you must maintain your log
files, and if your site is popular, they can grow rather large. On
one of my sites (which logs over a million impressions a month) the
log file grows by about 15mb a day so I usually rotate it every 3
days. Now, if you use a log analysis program you'll still be
battling large log files, however these are your server's log
files, and thus they are automatically rotated and maintained for
you.
Another added feature of this type of program is that you can
sometimes use them to track links from your site as well, so you
can identify exactly how much traffic you send away in a link
exchange.
Examples:
3. Log Analysis Programs
These are programs that analyze your server logs and then create
traffic reports accordingly. Some may include advanced filters,
which allow you to specify what exactly you want reported, but most
will simply report everything in the log files -- usually covering
total hits, impressions, and uniques. Of course, the quality of the
reports generated will depend on what software you actually
use.
Some log analyzers are free and come preinstalled on many
hosting accounts, while others can cost a good deal of money.
Examples:
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