Online Manual -
Counters
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Counters
As I've said before, visitor counters on pages don't really tell you anything.
However, you still might wonder if you should use one or not. It is really
up to you. Counters can do you as much harm as good, but they probably won't
do anything for you either way.
Most people include counters in their home pages because they might not have
access to their log file, or they might not even have a log file. If you
want to use a counter only to get an idea of the traffic to your site, then
I suggest talking to your provider to see if you can get access to your log
files and forgetting about the counter.
It is inaccurate to rely on a counter to gauge the number of visitors you
have coming to your site. I've seen many sorts of pranksters out on the
Internet who link to other people's counters. They only link to the
counter program and thus can make it increase without ever visiting your
page. One person in particular, has a hobby of collecting these links and
every time someone visits his page, all the counters he is linked to
increase by one.
Alternatively, you could use a free Internet service such as the Internet
Audit Bureau. They keep track of the number of times a page has been
visited for you at no charge. They do this by having you place a link to
a
small image, (their logo), somewhere in your home page. Each time your
page is loaded, it retrieves the logo from their site and provides them
with your special registration number for that page. By clicking on the
logo and going to the IAB's home site, you can view the statistics for your
page foe every day.
There are a couple of drawbacks to this system. It only records those
people who view your page with images turned on. If the reader does not
have in-lined images turned on, then their logo never loads and the visit
is not counted. The other problem is that if IAB's server is busy or
down, your page may dramatically slow down or get stuck loading while
waiting to access the image.
However, too many people get sidetracked on this "hits" or "visitor" number
game. What you really are interested in is the number of sales that your
page is generating on the Internet. Of course, if you are not selling
much, and the number of visitors to your site is high, then maybe your
product is not attractive.
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