Couting unique visitors to my web site

[rgomez]

Hello all...

I'm a bit of a novice when it comes to this topic and I'm hoping someone could share some of their expertise.

I would like to get a better view of how many unique visitors we're getting on our website than our ISP provides. Right now I can log in to my ISP's admin site and get a report that, among other things, tells me how many unique hosts have visited our site in the last 7 days.

I would LOVE it if I could see a graphical report that shows the number of unique visitors over time, so I can tell whether our traffic is growing, decreasing, etc. Is there an inexpensive (or better, free) application that I can use, knowing that our site is hosted?

Thanks in advance for all your replies...

Hello rgomez,

For complete descriptions, features & requirements of FREE remotely hosted web traffic analysis programs, go to:

http://www.hotscripts.com/Remotely_H...sis/index.html

I hope this helps.

[jestep]

If you are willing to pay for a program, I recommend hitslink: http://hitslink.com/

[aardvarkads]

If you work in Linux land:

Webalizer is free and relatively painless to install, provided you have server access:
http://www.mrunix.net/webalizer/

A few steps up the ladder is Urchin. I currently use Urchin. Not sure of costs because I purchased my licenses through my dedicated host:

http://www.urchin.com/

-mike

[StuW]

This is not a direct answer to your thread but my host also supplies the source addresses of the visitors. Maybe yours does also. I then use "Who Is" software to identify the visitors. My host is http://www.ipowerweb.com. and the reports are generated by Awstats which I am told is a very good statistic reporter.

By generating a small database of my visitors, I can see the new ones and determine repeat visitors.

I hope this will help you in some minor way.

[billkennedy32]

http://awstats.sourceforge.net/



amazing and free enjoy

[cyanide]

Originally Posted by billkennedy32

http://awstats.sourceforge.net/

Yes, good program, but your host will have to give you access to the raw log files and some won't do that

[davebarnes]

rgomez,

I presume this is/was a rhetorical question.

There are so many ways to "count visitors".

What you seek is "log analyzer" software. You need your web hosting company to "collect/rotate raw log data" on a monthly/weekly basis and then you need to downlaod the log data and run analysis software on it.

Or, you need to have analysis software on your webserver and analyse the data in situ.

So, surf to your favorite search engine and search on the phrase "log analyzer".

,dave

[TrafficProducer]

Check out the section Trackers, Website statistics, Traffic Measurement, Visitor, hit counters, etc.

at:-

http://www.acomputerportal.com/#Trac...counters, etc.

[DVDsPlusMore]

Hi rgomez -

With very few reservations, I'd suggest you investigate a free/paid service called StatCounter.

It uses a small javascript tag on your pages to collect a pretty comprehensive view of what's happening on your site -- e.g. unique visitors, paths used through your site, referring URL's, average visit lengths, etc. No access to web logs required ... it's all done through a secured web site where you can access/download your statistics. Additionally, there's no need for a visible graphic or logo on your site. They're content to make their service invisible to your users.

Slick and well done with a price that's right :-)

You can start as a free user and, if your site is low volume, this might be 100% sufficient for your needs. Later, as you have more traffic and more data being generated, you might graduate to their paid service. They have a user forum and it seems there are lots of people happily in both camps.

Perhaps suitable for your needs or someone else's here?

Best,

James @ DVDsPlusMore

[xmx]

Originally Posted by billkennedy32

http://awstats.sourceforge.net/



amazing and free enjoy

I also like a lot awstats, this service is a regular feature of my webhoster

[mlevenhagen]

My contribution:

The Webalizer!

...

[smm]

I am a small user, but among all I tried, I find www.statcounter.com as the best, and it is totally free and without ad. The only thing is that it is free till 100 users, but not bad I would say.

[willthegeek]

Well, I guess this is a good place to recommend my personal favorite:

(link removed)

I suppose that the more discerning amoung you will be able to tell why by giving it some deep thought and consideration.

There is a good article in Network Computing's Nov 5 issue comparing many of the various web analysis products, including some of those mentioned here. Prices are included. They range from $600 per year for the cheapest to over $100,000 and up. Webalizer is about $90,000, if I remember correctly.

Yes, there are many ways to measure 'unique' visitors. We use a combination of factors. The most reliable (if you want to call it that) is the cookie, since our research found that less than 1% have cookies disabled. If there is no cookie available, the next step is to look at the IP address and see if it has been here before. If so, this is counted as a returning visitor.

If the visitor has been gone less than one hour, we consider this to be the same visit. If longer than one hour, we assume that the visitor left and returned and so we count it as a returning visit.

BTW, we do not count 'hits'. We count page changes. Thus the objects on a page are ignored. When a visitor changes to another page, we count that change, log the page, gather another bunch of data and so on. The code that captures the page is the last thing on the page, so it is not counted until the page has finished loading. This prevents false counts where the visitor bailed before the page finished loading. This way we are pretty sure the visitor actually looked at the page. We also compute the time between page changes, so we can tell if the page has actually been read or 'spidered'. It is also a good way to detect 'click fraud'.

We are very aware of the problems in identifying unique visitors, and had to strike a balance between what we have to work with and the nature of the net. For example, the IP may have been recycled from someone else, as from a dial up connection. There is not much we can do about that. We also have no way of knowing if cookies have been deleted from a particular machine. These are problems we just have to live with. But in our experience, the above methods seem to work well for most situations. We use these methods on our own site, so we are satisfied that it is about as good as can be expected. Our competitors do pretty much the same.

As an aside, my own host provides basic stats for free with their service, as do many others. They are good stats, however, I have found them pretty useless for doing real business on the internet. They just don't provide critical information I need to do e-marketing. For example the percentage of change over time, or charts that compare this time period to the last one. This is critical to being able to guage effectiveness of ad campaigns, sales figures and in computing ROI.

Another small(?) problem is that ALL traffic to my client sites is logged in my server logs. This is some very heavy traffic! And only a small portion belongs to my site! How am I supposed to use this for running my business? I can't. Well, I could but the time and effort required to extract the data just isn't worth it.

I hope you good folks find this information informative and helpful. I don't mean to get spammy, but this is obviously a subject I know well. I hope I am providing good information. I welcome any discussion on this subject and will provide any help I can for those wanting to learn more about the headaches and joys of this very fascinating topic.

Kindest regards,

Will

[incrediblehelp]

Originally Posted by davebarnes

rgomez,
What you seek is "log analyzer" software. You need your web hosting company to "collect/rotate raw log data" on a monthly/weekly basis and then you need to downlaod the log data and run analysis software on it.

Yes Dave this is what I seek. Many only have to analyze one website and would prefer to have it on the web server and pay a monthly fee. I do not want to have monthly fees involved and only need the software on a local machine to run stats whenever I want to, weekly/monthly, after I download the raw logs.

Another need is the ability to add search engine names and spider robots manually myself.

What does everyone recommend for this situation?

[funbiz]

This one is free, pretty good and easy to set up.

http://www.statcounter.com/

[flawebworks]

Go to http://www.funnelwebcentral.com/ and download the funnel web analyzer. It's free. Access to raw logs needed.

For an investment of $25 - http://wusage.com
access to raw logs also needed.

[handry]

www.extreme-dm.com

[Tamelyne]

I concur with the others who have suggested statcounter. I absolutely love it! I am a newbie to web design too, and I find it incredibly easy to use. Nothing to download, only put a little code on each of your pages. It's even invisible if you want it to be.

[Pacific]

For a simple, freebie style of tracking, I use a combo of Sitemeter and EXtreme, both on the website's Home page, and the Sitemeter also on all other pages.

Sitemeter is great for checking where an inquiry originated from, if you're quick. The free version only shows the past 100 visitors. The paid version ($7.00) shows the last 1000.

The Extreme is useful for showing trends over time.

I wrote a review of different stats packages at:
http://www.pacificwebsites.com/trackers_comparison.htm

[Uban]

More people need to know about this one.

BBClone

It's free, it's in PHP, and fills my heart with glee. Seriously, it's been awesome. It helped me discover hits from MSN and Yahoo from one of my keywords I have in my signature below.

It will tell you time stats, length of visit, page last visited, browser, OS, IP, and the keyword used.

Here's their demo link: http://bbclone.de/demo/

Make sure to click the "Detailed Stats" in the top NAV. They don't have keyword capture displayed, but it's easy to configure. I'm not a PHP wizard by any means but I managed to get all of the above listed features up and running fast.

Hope this helps,

Uban

[gsevior]

Hi all

I use Stat counter from http://www.statcounter.com/. They have a free or paid for service and the statistical information about your visitors is incredible.

If you like you can add a stat counter to your website, or like me have it hidden. Take a look at my website and try find the counter.

GI Business data Solutions
http://www.galleryimage.com.au/

[Beatle]

I use sitemeter from sitemeter.com for my tracker and counter. It tells you everything you need to know about your visitors, and stores the info forever. There's graphs and stats galore. I really like it, and it's free. They do have a paid version, but I don't need it.

[AccuraCast]

I have used StatCounter and recommend it to my clients too. It is free and easy to use, but provides limited functionality, and stores logs for only up to 100 visits. You can buy additional log storage space for a small fee.

If you would like detailed stats and are very conscious about your website's usability, conversion etc, I would recommend NedStat. It is the single best website analytics tool i have ever used, and is WAY better than WebTrends (the market leader).

http://www.nedstat.com