Web site hit counter?

[Dennis]

Does anyone have experience with and opinions of what is the best free or not free hit counter service to use on your web site? I google hit counter and an uncountable amount of free offers come up. What should I watch out for?

thanks
Dennis

[Preston]

Dennis,

A hit counter will only display hits to the page in which it is running. Your best bet is to use the site statistics report from your web host. These are usually available in your sit'e control panel. If you host does not offer such a report, find another host, as you are missing a valuable resource.

-Preston

[Dennis]

Uh Oh My ignorance is showing again. thanks Preston I will see if I can locate that.
Dennis

[willwilson]

statcounter.com

[Stefano]

I use this:

http://www.superstat.info/index.htm
because is free and you could use it in invisible mode....

Stefano

[IanMazursky]

I second statcounter.com. They have been pretty good for my business and personal site.
They do have a limitation on the log size but its good enough for most uses.

[Wallace_Billingham]

I find by far the best tool is google analytics. It is totally free and very transparent. All you do is insert a tiny line of code into each page. Then you get very nice reports about who is visiting, where they came from, how long they stayed, what pages they visited. I have a similar service from my hosting company but I find the google tool to be better

[aphexafx]

I've used statcounter.com for most of my sites, however Google Analytics looks really nice. So, I've just installed it on my site, alongside statcounter, in order to try it out. Thanks for the recommendation, Wallace_Billingham.

[dazedgonebye]

sitemeter.com is free and has been adequate to my modest needs.

I might check out google analytics though.

[77seriesiii]

I have tried both google analytics, statcounter and mint. I found GA and Mint to be the better of the three. Mint costs $30 ? for the lifetime of the website and GA is free. I am solely relying on Mint right now. GA takes a bit of time to get going and Mint is updated somewhere between instant and 60 minutes, cant remember.

good luck with the choice.

./e

[IanG]

Have a look at this other thread (http://www.largeformatphotography.info/forum/showthread.php?t=46817), post #7 and the two free programs I've suggested they will give you in depth analysis, far better than a counter.

Ian