Once you have created your new WordPress.com blog, you will need to add your new blog to your Google web masters account, generate and submit a site map, and register with search engines. After you have published a few posts and attracted some visitors some questions will begin to arise.
Visitor tracking questions
- Where did your blog visitors come from?
- Which search engines did unique visitor hits or returning unique web visitors come from?
- What path did they take on your site?
- Which browser and which operating system do your visitors use?
- How long are your visitors on your page per visit and how many pages did they view?
- What time of the day did they come?
Hits, Page Views, Unique Visitors
What is a hit? In web analytics, a hit is any request for a file from a web server. By request means a hit calculates page content delivered, all images to complete that page, and any additional files that need to be loaded to make the web page you are looking at, appear the way it does.
What is a page view? A page view is a request to load a single page of an internet site that results from a page request from a web surfer clicking on a link on another HTML page which is pointing to the page in question.
What is a unique visitor? A unique visitor is access from a single IP to a web server that generates page views and hits during a particular visit. When a visitor has cookies disabled, there is no way of establishing if they are a unique visitor or not.
WordPress.com Stats
Every free hosted WordPress.com blog has WordPress.com Stats as a free feature. Let’s examine what the WordPress.com stats program delivers.
WordPress.com Stats – Every time a visitor views a URL on your blog, the web browser loads a small smiley-face image from the stats system. The action is logged and the logs are summarized every few minutes to update the graphs, charts, and lists. The following are not counted:
- Visits from registered users of the blog when they are not logged in.
- Visits to uploaded documents and files.
- Visits from browsers that do not execute javascript or load images.
- GoogleBot and other search engine spiders.
Additionally, wordpress.com bloggers may choose to use free third party stats counters on their blogs, provided they are not javacript counters.
Activemeter- More than just a hit counter or web counter, ActiveMeter is a web site visitor tracker. Most web site counter code provides traffic data and statistics. ActiveMeter is that and much more! Because the real value lies in tracking visitors, not just visits, our unique web site analyzer is designed around web visitors. ActiveMeter is a fast and accurate web site analytic that is easy to use. We provide it as a FREE web site tracking service so there is no software to worry about. Take a look at the web counter demo to see how useful it can be to you.
Sitemeter – Site Meter’s comprehensive real time website tracking and counter tools give you instant access to vital information and data about your sites audience. With our detailed reporting you’ll have a clear picture of who is visiting your site, how they found you, where they came from, what interests them and much more.
Sitemeter tour – This report lists the total number of visits, average number of visits per day (visits this week / 7), the average length of a visit this week, the number of visitors today, the number of visits this week (not including today), the number of page views, the number of page views per visit this week, the average number of page views per day (page views this week / 7 ), the number of page views today, and the number of page views this week (not including today). The ‘week’ time period on which these are based is the previous 7 days (not including today) and does not start on any particular day of the week. The ‘week’ time period will change each day.
Sitemeter is not a real time stats program. This is what I get from sitemeter on my wordpres.COM blog:
Recent Visitors by Visit Details
Detail Domain Name Visit Time PageViews Visit Length
Recent Visitors by Entry Pages
Recent Visitors by Exit Pages
Today’s Visits and Page Views
Previous 7 Days
Previous 30 Days
Previous 12 Months
Navigation
Trends Location
Tracking Visitor
Tracking Web
Browsers
Today’s Visit Depth
Daily Visit Depth
Daily Durations
Continents
Countries
Distance
Time Zones
Language
OS
Domain
Organization
Browser Share
JavaScript
Monitor Resolution
Color Depth
Recent Visitors
World Map
Recent Visitors by Location
In my other blog which is a wordpress.ORG blog I have the javascript version of Sitemeter and in addition it gives me Recent Visitors by Referrals
Detail Referring URL
Statcounter – A free yet reliable invisible web tracker, highly configurable hit counter and real-time detailed web stats. Insert a simple piece of our code on your web page or blog and you will be able to analyse and monitor all the visitors to your website in real-time!
- Free, Fast, Responsive, Quick loading and Reliable Service.
- Invisible Tracking – no ads on your website.
- Accurate real-time website statistics with detailed visitor tracking and analysis.
- View Live Demo
Experimentation
When experimenting with all of them what my co-admin found was that there was absolutely no consistency from one to the other most of the time. One day Sitemeter would say there were 100 hits more than Statcounter, and Activemeter would show 100 less than Sitemeter.
The largest discrepancy was over 200 hits (Note: The blog in use for testing was getting only 450 hits per day). There was also had a 3 day period where one of them showed hits in the teens (12-19) – not wordpress stats – while the others were still showing up around 400-450. At the end of a three month testing period, there was a 26% discrepancy between the lowest and highest totals.
Here’s the bottom line
Activemeter, Sitemeter, Statcounter, wordpress stats and all the others will never agree. Each one of them decides how and what they will count as a hit. Some count page views and some count unique visitors. Therefore, use any of the stats counters only as a general guide to hits.
Understand that an application that is not running on the same servers your blog is on is going to be susceptible to wild fluctuations. This is because all hits have to be transferred over the internet to different servers, and there are literally thousands of things that can go wrong between the server your blog is on and the server at the stats place.
Also be aware of the possibility that the software or hardware at the stats place may be broken and not recording, or counting things as intended.
Related post found in this blog: Real time visitor tracking (non javascript) for blogs, getclicky real time stats for wordpress.com blogs, Two free unique visitor counters for wordpress.com blogs
lawmacs
October 2, 2009
Thanks very useful information i agree with you totally that different stats shows or counter visitors differently
timethief
October 3, 2009
They are measuring different things so that’s why the discrepancies exist. It’s also why some bloggers choose to have more than one method for visitor tracking.
Cindy
October 2, 2009
Still doing your fine work, I see! Thanks for the great summary on this, tt. It’s more useful info than I can absorb this minute, but your site is a terrific reference that I continually return to when I am puzzling over some aspect of blogging. Cheers, cgn
timethief
October 3, 2009
Thanks for the compliment. Please feel free to return over and over again. :)
worddreams
October 2, 2009
I’ve been using the free version of Statcounter, though I’ve tried a few others. Statcounter has more for the (lack of) money with pages of data. Limited to 500 hits, though, so can’t get much of a trend.
timethief
October 3, 2009
Active meter is limited to 1000 so it may be a better choice. On the other hand sitemeter is my preference.
internet tips
October 4, 2009
yeah really good summary thanks
timethief
October 4, 2009
You’re welcome.
Vikas Gupta
October 7, 2009
Well researched article.
I think the most reliable and comprehensive counter is Statcounter. I am using it on about 10 of my blogs [including a few defunct ones] and the no. of hits [page views] showed by it and wordpress match almost daily!
Sitemeter sucks! It often can’t detect IP location etc! Also you need separate accounts for new blogs.
Statcounter support [I only recently talked to them] also impressed. They replied rather promptly though the request ticket I had submitted was marked low urgency.
timethief
October 8, 2009
Hmmm … I like sitemeter (she said defensively). ;)
miko
October 7, 2009
nice info
timethief
October 8, 2009
Thanks for the feedback.
Tricia
December 13, 2009
Thank you for the very comprehensive info on tracking. I’ve had statcounter for a week now and find it a useful adjunct to the WP statcounter. I like the info on unique & returning visitors, page views and location. I’m not sure, but it seems that statcounter is the only one that offers the option of making the stats invisible or public. I’m not a fan of having any kind of statcounter appear on my blog, so the “invisible” option suits me fine.
timethief
December 13, 2009
You’re welcome. Yes, statcounter is the only counter that’s invisible. I have visible sitemeters on all my blogs, and I set them so that the stats cannot be read by my visitors. I do think that statcounter may be a better choice but I’m too lazy to change now.
Nita
December 15, 2009
I have also noticed that sitemeter gives wrong information as to location. I am using both statcounter and sitemeter and I find that sitemeter also gives me more page views. I think it records search engine visits also.
timethief
December 15, 2009
That’s interesting and it confirms that no two stats counters produce the same results. It seems that we ought to recognize that use any of the stats counters can only be relied on as a general guide to hits, because they all use different factors to determine numerical output.
machholz
February 1, 2010
Excellent researched article, just stumbled across you sorry I mean your blog
Best wishes from Ireland
Thank you
Machholz
timethief
February 1, 2010
@machholz
I’m glad you like this article. There are two related articles as well:
http://onecoolsite.wordpress.com/2009/10/24/real-time-visitor-tracking-non-javascript-for-blogs/
http://onecoolsitebloggingtips.com/2010/01/06/getclicky-real-time-stats-for-wordpress-com-blogs/
Samantha
February 19, 2010
Nice blog, i like it, its informative,
i will visit his blog more often.
i like your topic, specially about
Visitor tracking on WordPress.com blogs
Cheers
timethief
February 19, 2010
Thanks for the positive feedback. Please come again soon. :)
cwgala
February 25, 2010
Great information! I’m new to this but I’m learning quickly because I’m blogging every single day [link removed by timethief] trying to find the funny in every day on my blog GRIN. My question is this: With wordpress statistics, when they give you the page views per day, are the subscriptions included in that total or not???
If anyone can answer I would be so grateful. email me at [link removed by timethief] Thank you!!! Doing my best to learn.
timethief
February 25, 2010
Hello there,
As your username is already linked to your blog including it as a second link insure your comment will end up in the spam filter. Also note that posting an email address in the form will guarantee that email address harvesting spam bots will be on it like fleas on a dog. See this post to find out how to post an email address in a form that won’t be “harvested”. http://onecoolsitebloggingtips.com/2007/10/18/eluding-email-address-spam-bots/
Here are links to entries wordpress.com support documentation:
http://en.support.wordpress.com/blog-subscriptions/#subscription-statistics
http://en.support.wordpress.com/stats/
I hope this helps you. Happy blogging. :)
P.S. I do not provide support by email.
sonsothunder
May 10, 2010
Thanks Timethief, I was checking out some of the stats info, after seeing that forum brief, about someone trying to vote in a certain Stat Program. I personally don’t like it either. i have several on my main site, and prefer another which I wont mention by name 2 to 1 over the one in question on the forums right now. But, I was interested in some information on the feedjit. I see that it works live time for your site, on the meter pretty much. Anyway, I’m sure I will catch the information from you on it as time goes on…Please, don’t steal all the time…I need just a few minutes of yours. Love this site. Oh, by the way, I did decide that …you were right, so I went back to Bueno
timethief
May 10, 2010
@sonsof thunder
Google Analytics is an excellent program and is being used by Staff to derive information from for the WordPress stats we have on our dashboards. It is a script that we individual users cannot use on your blogs. Futhermore WordPress.com is owned by Autmattic and there is no democracy when it comes to selecting features.
The person who posted the forum thread was off base by thinking that the handful of WordPress.com users that post to the English speaking WordPress.com support forum could or even should be voting on any corporate decisions. We have no role to play in that process. Yet wherever young American males, lacking in life experience are found online, we get this kind of nonsensical democracy and voting stuff being posted … SIGH
Feedjit is an okay live stats program. I like it but IMO getclicky is even better as it provides more information. See > http://onecoolsitebloggingtips.com/2010/01/06/getclicky-real-time-stats-for-wordpress-com-blogs/
rostasi
June 17, 2010
Thanks for the information,
but I’ve been trying to figure out how to convert
the many lines of text that you get in FEEDJIT
(it begins with “<script type=") into BBCode for Last.FM.
Could you help with this?
timethief
June 17, 2010
We cannot use javascript on WordPress.COM blogs. The software strips out the code to preserve security as this is a multi-user blogging platform.
See > http://en.support.wordpress.com/code/
See also > http://onecoolsitebloggingtips.com/2009/10/24/real-time-visitor-tracking-non-javascript-for-blogs/ and note that you need to go to the feedjit site and ask for the non-javacript code for wordpress.com blogs be emailed to you http://feedjit.com/app/contact Then simply copy and paste the code into a text widget and display it in your sidebar. http://en.support.wordpress.com/widgets/text-widget/
For LastFM please read this entry > http://onecoolsitebloggingtips.com/2008/05/12/lastfm-and-project-playlist-for-wordpresscom/
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July 11, 2010
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