ANALYZE

Pros and Cons of Traffic Counters
(otherwise known as hit counters)

Trackers - or so-called hit-counters are essentially small pieces of code placed in a hidden part of your HTML code. Each time your page is loaded, the script calls up another server whose database records that your site had a visitor. The tracking server can also record anonymous information about the visitor that requests the web pages at your server.

From a web interface you will be able to follow the traffic on your website in almost real time. The types of reports and features you get access to vary a lot from one tracker to another. With most of them you can see what search engines people come from, what keywords they used, and in some cases what search engine spiders have been visiting your website.

Advantages:

• Easy to get started All you have to do is copy-paste a piece of code into your pages, and you are ready.
  
  
• No computers or software necessary
  You don't have to invest in either hardware or software - it is all on the computer that hosts the tracker.
  
  
• Count cached page views
  Even if a visitor loads the web page from cache (proxy cache at the ISP or local cache in the browser), and not from your server, it will trigger the script and count as a view. All views therefore will be counted.

Disadvantages:

• No raw data
  You get the reports you get - that's it. As you do not have the raw data that is used for the reporting you cannot perform your own data mining or tweak any numbers. You will have to live with the reporting that comes with the package.
  
  
• Dependency of others With a tracker you are dependant on another company to record and provide the data. If they fail and lose the data there is nothing you can do about it.
  
  
• The best trackers are expensive
  If you run a large website with many visitors and want the best trackers it can become very expensive. In that case you can always consider other options.

TIP:
You can find a list of all the major trackers on the market in the ODP directory.

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