Statistical records are crucial right from the onset of setting up a blog or website. This is useful both for your ‘bragging’ and ‘boastings’. It is also useful for potential and current advertisers on your blog. It would give them an estimate of your blog’s popularity and geo-target reach.
Traffic statistics also help you and your advertisers to understand where your visitors come from; what type of browser, PC, Screen resolution, duration, and other metrics of your visitors’ activities while they were on your site/blog.
As a standard, the number one tool I use to capture and track traffic to my sites is GOOGLE ANALYTICS. When you get to the site (Google Analytics) and sign up, you would be given a code to copy and paste on the template of your website or blog. The only major limitation of this tool is that the records are not real time live reports, but 24-hour delay.
The next tool I use is the SITEMETER. Sitemeter is my favorite tool for tracking visitor behavior, because of the easy access to the data by anybody. The only limitation of the Sitemeter is that the free version does not disclose the full IP address of visitors.
Visit the site to sign up for the free version. After signing up, you would be given a set of codes to paste on the template of your website/blog.
HISTATS is another metric tool for tracking visitors to your blog. It has the advantage of publicly showing live visitors who are currently online on your blog or website. You can sign up at the site and copy-paste the generated code on the template of your blog.
The fourth statistic tool I patronize is STAT COUNTER. This has the advantage of invisibility. This means that visitors may not know that you were tracking them because the tracking devise is not visible anywhere on your blog/website. Unlike Sitemeter, the free version of Stat Counter has the advantage of disclosing the full IP address and ISP of your visitors.
This tool, just like others too, has its own limitation, and that is, once you enter into the ‘big league’ of 9,000+ page views per day, the code would be disabled because Start Counter does not track visitors for free at this ‘big’ level. You are expected to subscribe with some amount of money for the paid version of this counter, if your traffic level is above 9,000 page views per day.