Tracking your ads is important so you can
tell how well your promotions are (or are
not) doing. No point in wasting your advertising
money, is there?
These free trackers and
counters will show you how many site visitors
and much more. If you're not yet tracking
your ads and monitoring your websites, this
list will help you get started.
Some trackers will even tell you which search
terms people used to find your site. And
this is very handy when it comes to optimising
your code to improve your search engine rankings.
Here's a list of free
web-based trackers. They ALL tell you how
many visitors your site has had, and MOST
provide real-time reporting, so I've noted
other interesting features of each. If this
list isnt long enough for you, enter "web
tracking" into one of the search
engines.
Tip: Some web experts
will tell you that one of the telltale signs
of a beginner is to have a visible tracker
icon on your web pages. Some of these below
dont require you to display anything.
Free website trackers and counters reviewed
AddFreeStats will track all the pages
of your site by hour, day, week, month and
year. Plus time your visitors spent on your
site, type of visitors (new or returning),
where they came from (search engines, links
from other sites, etc), all search engine
keywords, and more... To help you can
compare sizes with the graphics below, theirs
is 88x31.
eXTReMe Tracking gives you detailed reports
including a list of the search terms
and engines they used to find your page. My
favourite. Amazingly it's still free,
as long as you dont mind others being able
to look at your stats. Or just $5 per domain
to hide all your reports and tracker icons.
And if you place it inside a table, you can
change the background colour behind the icon...
a nice touch! By the way, I've tweaked the
code to open the report in a new window. The
visible image is just 41x38.
FXWeb WebTracker provides real-time stats
on your traffic by the day and hour, and how
many first time versus return visitors.
HitBox
Personal is also free and gives comprehensive
reports. You choose between 2 sizes of ads
to display: 468x60 or 125x125.
LnkinLite is a free Perl CGI script but
it does require intermediate-level installation
experience. If that's you, the good news is
that it delivers some useful functionality:
it updates the counts and then redirects to
the required URL, it counts which hyperlinks
and which exits in your site are most commonly
used, it porovides "promo checking" for any
emailed text URLs, and it counts links to
your site as well as hyperlinks within your
site.
RightStats
provides free hit counters and free site stats.
"Right Stats is one of the best and oldest
site tracking service on the net. It provides
more then just free hit counters. Right Stats
will track your complete web site stats such
as hits, page views, referrals etc 24 hours
a day. Complete site stats, easy to read charts
& graphs. No software to install."
ShowStat
is also free, gives comprehensive reports
and requires you to display a small-ish visible
(120x32) image.
SiteMeter displays your hourly/daily/monthly
visitor counts, where they came from (referrers)
and forecasts. Choose the size of your graphic:
either 88x32 or 20x20, the smallest image
of all.
SiteStatz provides a frames and non-frames
version.
StatCounter
has an invisible counter so there's
nothing to display. You also get comprehensive
reports.
StatsFly counts your visitors by total
hits, total unique visitors by day/month,
average visitors per day, referrers (see what
sites are linked to you and how much traffic
they are sending), plus which search engines
have you listed, and what keywords
are sending visitors. It's free or $10 a month
to have your stats protected.
WebLog
is "a comprehensive access log analysis
tool. It allows you to keep track of activity
on your site by month, week, day and hour,
to monitor total hits, bytes transferred and
page views, and to keep track of your most
popular pages. It can also print out secondary
reports to track "user sessions",
showing the paths taken through your site
by your visitors and giving you a rough idea
of how long they spent looking at your pages,
and to provide you with information on referring
sites, the search engine keywords which
brought your visitors and the agents and platforms
they used while visiting." It's also
free. You need to know how to install CGI
scripts, however.
WebStat
provides comprehensive reports. Their logo
is 88x31.
WebSite Traffic Report sends you a daily
email with summary statistics and graphs,
plus an optional detailed listing of each
site visitor including date, time, visitor
domain, referring site, pages accessed, keywords
used in search engine, and more. (They may
place a popup or a banner on your page for
the free service, or you can pay $10 for detailed
reporting with no popup/banner.)
How often is your site offline? Free website
monitoring
InternetSeer will send you an email
alert when your site goes down. The free
service is for one URL which is checked every
hour. How long your site takes to connect
is also reported.
AddFreeStats
RightStats