How do I figure out how many visits my website gets?
Um, yeah, that’s quite the cut and paste netbros… It looks like the 1and1 beginner package doesn’t include an access log analyzer, for that you need to pay another $1/month. Of you could see about setting up awstats or webalizer, downloading your log files, and processing them on your home computer. There are a few issues with this approach though, first, the logs are usually only processed at night, so you can’t check in during the day. The other issue is that they don’t always do a good job of filtering out bots. Another option is to use some sort of app you can install on your hosting and put a tracking javascript on your page. Advantages: updated in real time, info about browser capabilities (screen size, etc), and the use of javascript & cookies makes it possible to track returning visitors, and distinguish between different users behind the same proxy (doesn’t work for people with javascript and/or cookies blocked, but they usually fall back to a tracking image, so they still g
You’ve made your first pass at promoting your web site. You listed in all the important search engines, established link partnerships with like-minded sites, perhaps started an opt-in newsletter, even did some offline advertising. Count on doing that forever. But you also need to know how effective your activities have been. The first thing you realize is that counter you put on your home page doesn’t tell you a thing. Let’s see, you had 78 hits today. Great, now who were they? Don’t know? OK, where did they come from? Who sent them? You mean I can find that out? You also discover through a complimentary email message that Wilson Alvarez in Brazil really liked your mouse trails tutorial; but, your hit counter didn’t increment. How could that be? Well, did you put a counter on every single page of your site, or just on the home page? Rest assured, when the search engines spidered your pages, they didn’t list all the keywords they found as belonging to your entry page. People actually do
