Counters you can count on

When I set up my blog, I started looking for a counter so that I could keep track of how many people were looking at my site. I was naturally curious and I was also naturally disappointed by how few people were looking at what I had to say (but I'm getting ahead of myself).

A good counter to use if you don't want to know anything more than how many hits you're getting is amazingcounters. They have several options on what your counter will look like, so you can fit your new (free) counter to your template. The drawback is the ads that come along with it. It's not a really big issue as the ads are small and located right next to the counter (which most likely is down at the bottom of your site anyways).

A better option would be sitemeter or statcounter. Both counters give you a total count, broken down by hits, unique users and repeat users. You also get to see where they are coming from. Unfortunately, you only get to see reports on the last 100 visitors (with the free service). Both reports are in 'real-time' which is not the same as instant. Keep in mind it takes time for the information to get to their servers and it takes time for it to be processed.

SiteMeter's info is accessible by all. So if you want to advertise your high traffic rate, sitemeter may be the counter for you.

Statcounter allows you to hide the counter altogether.

I've included a sample graph that I get from statcounter on how many visitors have hit my blogs.

Google has come out with it's analytics recently. I'm trying it out to see what they have, but I'm not ready to recommend it one way or the other.