Dashboard Stats vs Site Meter stats
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SItemeter counts repeated page views if the same visitor waits more than 20 minutes per view-of-the-same-page. If WP isn’t doing the same thing, SM will appear to under-count.
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WordPress have said they do not count bots, spiders, etc.
I’m kind of shocked to see that paid sitemeter only counts up to 4000 IPs. Not that I have legions of interns running them through NeoTrace, but still! That’s very odd.
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Raincoaster…Can you please explain your experience with NeoTrace. I just did read some reviews and they said since MacCaffee bought Neo Trace its value has declined.
Also, per stats, is this program an added value to site meter and WP stats?
Thank you Sir.
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I’m not a Sir.
Why in the name of all that is holy would you want Neotrace if you’ve got thousands of IPs to run? You have to do them manually, one at a time. I was only getting a few dozen hits and I actually gave myself Repetitive Stress Disorder in my mouse hand. My experience was that it was fun for awhile, but you’ve got a world map on your site meter already, so why bother?
NeoTrace is not a stat program; it’s an identification program. It simply tracks where each of your hits came from, down to the computer or node and such. I can’t see any utility it would present for someone with a world IP mapper already active.
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Opps. Sorry Maam. Just joking. Thanks for your help here. I am getting acquainted with all the vernacular and nomenclature in the bloggosphere, so PLEASE bear with me as I learn. I read over at your site, that you pimped to me earlier (thanks for the pimp). You recommend and gave several different options. My stat head is spinning as I do not know which to select and trust: crazy egg, podstats, get clicky, podcaststat.com. Which of these options would be the best to have for accuracy and dependability over say sitemeter or some other stat counter? I was intriqued with getclicky as from what I can understand it is free and packed with information. Ideas???
Thanks again for your patience as I learn. Have a simply phenomenal weekend.
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Those were suggestions from a highly technically sophisticated group of bloggers at the Northern Voice blogging conference. As I said, I use only two stat counters, and the only reason I have Sitemeter is as a backup in case the WordPress.com stats fail me.
I would suggest trying each of them for a couple of days, then comparing the results you get. YOu’re bound to notice which ones present the information in a way that you find easier to use. Why not post your findings as a review in your blog and let us know? Lots of people would be interested.
Without access to the Google Analytics that the WordPress.com staff have on our blogs, we have absolutely no way of knowing which stats are accurate. Essentially none are; they’re all estimations, which is why looking at the changes over time is far more meaningful than looking at the actual numbers on any given program. Realize also that a lot of these utilities will ask you to insert something in the code, and we can’t do that here at WordPress.com, so those stat counters are not an option for us.
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Thanks so much for your input. I do not have any sophisticated way of comparing / contrasting blog stats from a myriad of stat counters. I do not want to sound selfish but that is not a project that I want to take on RC.
Dr. Mike, RC or any other wise person reading this post, please give me your opinion on which stat counter / blog counter would stand out from among the rest, for ease of use, thorough analytics and real time capability….in the free ware, non java script market or stat counters.
Bottom line is that I am encouraged when I see who and how many people are coming back and reading my site, if they refered others to my site and other such information. I am not really interested in comparisons at this point. Just give your recommendations.
Thanks again
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secondchance, what makes you think we want to take it on for you? That’s what you asked us to do: original research on utilities we’re not familar with and a comparative analysis. Suggesting that you do the research yourself isn’t inappropriate.
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Dr. Mike, RC or any other wise person reading this post, please give me your opinion on which stat counter / blog counter would stand out from among the rest, for ease of use, thorough analytics and real time capability
They are all pretty much about the same. Just do the research yourself. Sign up for a few; stick them all on your site; and pick the one that gives you the most visitors.
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Honestly, Craig, why don’t you stick with SiteMeter (which i think you said you already have) and see how well it works for you? Recommendations from others are always going to have the caveat that what they want out of stats may not be the same as what you want. You keep saying you’re new to all this, so why not give yourself a chance to see what works and what doesn’t? Just relax, sit back for a few days or a week and see what happens.
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Thanks so much for your help. I need to do the research. Thanks RC, Dr.Mike. TB and Judy. Have a great weekend.
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I’ve been using active meter for several weeks, and it has yet to be the same as the WP stats on hits. I’ve been letting things run for a while so that the time differences would be less obvious and sort of even out. I run a Mac, and use Firefox for my site admin and such, and use Safari for normal browsing. Tonight was the first time I had noticed that when I went to my site with Safari (not logged in) that it counted my visits, which could account for some of the discrepancies between WP and active meter. If you have your homepage set to your blog, as I do, I would suggest staying logged in all day and that way you aren’t skewing your hits.
Dr mike or RC or someone else at WP, is there any way that you guys could use a cookie so that when we are not logged in, our visits will not be counted?
Just wondering. Now that I know this skews my results, I’ve changed my homepage and will not visit my site with a browser that is not logged in.
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As I’ve said many a time before: stats are not absolute numbers, they are only useful for comparing to one another, as in “how did I do today compared to how I did yesterday?” Intuitively, we believe that there should be a way to measure absolute hits, but that currently does not exist as far as I can tell. If it did, it would certainly count ALL your own visits to your blog as well as all spider/bot visits, and that would skew things to the point of meaninglessness.
Your stats on one system will never exactly match your stats on another system unless they are the same system behind the scenes or there’s been a coincidence. What would be strange is if one showed an increasing trend and the other didn’t: that would be cause for concern, because it could indicate that one system isn’t working properly.
I actually haven’t used my sitemeter in months. I have it only in case something catastrophic happens to the WordPress stat system.
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