How to track your visitors

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Today I’m going to look at how I track the visitors to my blog so I can see how many there are, where they are from and how long they spend on the blog etc… In fact it’s quite bewildering how much information you can see about your blog, and can then use to help improve the experience for your readers.

There are lots of web statistic packages out there and it can be hard to know which one is best. Also there is always speculation about statistic results and the differences that can appear between packages. Here’s an interesting conversation about it.

The beat packages to use

There are two different types of tracking packages available file caching and page tagging, these are the different ways that the statistic packages use to track your blogs information. So I cover all bases and use one of each of these type of packages, Google Analytics and Awstats, and I think these are the best ones for me to use.

1. The first statistics package I use is Google Analytics, and obviously is owned by Google. It uses the page tagging system to track the results and has it’s own blog for helpful news, information and tips. It’s easy to install I just signed up for an account and then placed the code (step by step instructions) I was given onto my site to start tracking.

2. The second statistics package I use is Awstats which uses the file caching system to track results and is attached to my blog hosting service Bluehost, to draw the stats straight from my hosting server. This was also easy to activate, I went into the control panel on my account and went to ‘choose logs’ and then clicked Awstats to activate it.

Are they accurate? 

At the end of the day the figures can never be 100% guaranteed because of changing variables. But they do give me a good idea of what is going on, and how I can change or improve my site. If I know what is working and what isn’t I can make the necessary changes to help attract more visitors and readers to my blog.

When I quote figures regarding my statistics I am using these packages to gain that information.

Mandy

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May 9, 2008 | Filed Under Blogging Information 

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