Counting on a web stats enthusiast

Let’s break into a better understanding of these two similar yet importantly different metrics:
Unique Visitors & IP Hosts.

In a general sense, a unique visitor is an actual person sitting at their computer reading your site.  This metric counts the number of these people for the entire day.  If any one person visits more than once during the day, this person is only consider one (1) unique visitor.  This is obviously used to determine how many real people have visited your site during the day and it doesn’t duplicate because of return visits.

The “IP Host” while similar to “Unique Visitors”, will only use the IP address details of the host computer/network.  Since multiple people can share the same computer or network, this metric will lump them into one single “IP Host”.  Why is this metric important?  Think about two things: first - diversity of traffic, how widespread is your audience regardless of whether they are in the same city, are these people closely connected or work at the same office?  The IP Hosts feature helps when comparing traffic data for reach and validity.  Secondly - because of the nature of this data, IP Hosts are critically important for helping to prevent false/fake traffic from skewing the real results.

Overall:
-IP Hosts is best used a a check to ensure that your traffic is relatively healthy.
-Unique Visitors gives you the best measure of your site’s audience size.

Don’t take for granted that your stats are installed and configured properly.  Make sure that your code is installed once on all pages.  Common errors include:
-installing only on the homepage
-copying partially broken or fully broken code to less used pages
-referencing the code to your PC (so it will only work for you) - double check by asking a friend of yours to try loading some specific pages - see if they show up in your stats.
-other miscelaneous HTML errors which may break the rest of your site - check if you site is w3c valid.
-made updates to your site and you may have lost your code

Aside from the obvious tracking errors, there are some other considerations you should pay very close attention to:
-Is your site interactive in some way so that viewers will navigate yoru site without creating pageloads?  You may want to add “n action” javascript events to load your tracker for each instance.
-Are you using the simple or standard HTML code?  If your editing environment can support the standard code, you should use it!  It is far superior to the simple HTML version of the code.
-Are you lumping multiple sites together in the same site profile?  You may find that creating seperate site profiles will give you a much clearer picture on the nature of each site.  You will also find management of these multuiple profiles to be much easier with future GoStats features.
-Do you want your stats private or public?  Double check the status and make sure that it is set to your liking/comfort.

Don’t assume the above are the only possible problems you can have.  Think further about other issues which are related to the uniqueness of your own site.

Reports of unique visitors are not all the same; the key determinant is over what period they are considered “Unique”.

For example, unique visitors per month is not calculated by adding the totals of unique visitors for each day.  This can cause double counting, here’s an example of why:

-day 1 Jane, Mike, Steve (3)
-day 2 Baxter, Lewis, Rachel, Mo (4)
-day 3 Jane, Baxter, Steve (3)
-day 4 - 30 no traffic
-day 31 - Miguel, Sara, Steve, Mo (4)
The sum total of all days is 14.  However, the true monthly “Absolute” unique  value is 9 since the following people should not be counted multiple times for the month: (Jane, Steve, Mo, Baxter)

Remember to check the “Return Visitors” section of your GoStats report for the true number of “Absolute Unique monthly Visitors”.  Keep in mind that normally people quote the sum total of each day as their monthly unique value - you may want to correct them.

In an ever increasing on-demand world, having a site load very quickly is important.  People, customers, employees, yourself, and even today’s search engines put a lot of importance into a quick loading page.

Take a look for a moment at your existing web stats tracking technologies.  Some of you may be using a web log analyzer, some may be using a full featured tracker like GoStats, perhaps you’re using both?  In any case, pay careful attention to your web log analyzer setup and be sure that you aren’t wasting resources:
-don’t have your web log analyzer processing during peak hours of your site
-be careful that your web log system does not process too much or undeeded data.  These analyzers are good for hunting bots and catching errors, but not everything. If you have a web stats tracker like GoStats already installed, then you can reduce much of the work done on your server.
-update your software often - keep your logs rotated - patch any security holes quickly.  If you have a web analyzer installed, budget some time to maintaining that installation.  As you are using GoStats, we take care of that for you.

The team here at GoStats has been busy putting together a ton of new features - we encourage you to try them out and give us your feedback:
-New chart controls (It’s likely that you’ve already noticed these)
-Some quick summary and random features in your summary report.
-Much improved graphs and charts.
-Clicks report = you must update your counter code to enable tracking for this feature.
-Enhancement to the Visitors Map feature as well as a new regions report
-A stunningly powerful new “Last Guests” engine.
-A special control overlay for Pro Accounts (use CTRL+X to activate) = you must update your HTML code.
-Awesome new web counter faces and an improved interface for customization
-Overall improved accuracy, usability and speed.

Keep your eyes open for some further enhancements coming very soon.

-The GoStats team

Some new and exciting features have been introduced to GoStats.com!

Want to view your stat changes over time?
You can now view stats in a variety of ways including:
- Last time you viewed your stats
- Previous Day’s Stats
- Stats from the beginning of the Week, Month or Year
- Stats from a specified date

The delta represents the change from the time A to time B. So if you had 30 hits on your site yesterday and 75 hits on your site today, then your delta is up 45 hits or 60%!

To view this new feature, login to your GoStats.com account and check it out under site stats!

Do you prefer graphical data or charts?
Stats can now be viewed in either Linear Graph form or Text (Bar Chart) form.
On each graph/chart stats for hits, sessions, visitors and hosts can be viewed together or separately

Check this feature out here for the GoStats.com site.

Where your visitors are from - more than a map
Another cool new feature is the Visitors on Map option, located under “Visitors”. This option allows a visual representation of where on Earth people who visit your site are from. It’s not perfect yet, but its a great way to see how your site reaches people around the world!
To see where the people who visit GoStats.com are from visit here.

These are just some of the new features that make GoStats.com the best web stat counter out there!

GoStats.com recently launched its Vietnamese website.
Check out GoStats.vn to see this new version of GoStats.com.
Special thanks to the guys in Vietnam for helping launch the site before Tết!

This is just a quick reminder that GoStats now offers multiple sites within the same login. All of the counters for your sites can be adminsitered from the same login. If you are only tracking one site or if you track many sites, it’s probably a good time to consolidate all your tracker accounts into one single login. It may be a time consuming process at first, but I’m sure you will find some great benefits with new features added in the near future. Stay tuned!

Thanks to the hard work of the wonderful people in Russia, and Germany GoStats is now operational in those two languages as:
GoStats Russia, and GoStats Germany

A Vietnamese version of GoStats will also be available in the coming months. And GoStats is also considering expanding into other languages as well.

We look forward to the challenges and rewards that the new year and the new versions of GoStats brings.

• Visit GoStats.com and click on “Sign Up” located on the left side of the page below user name and password
• Fill in all the fields and click “sign up”
• When you sign up, you will be able to add your site(s)
• Click on “Add new site” and fill out the fields
• You can add as many sites as you want
• After adding your site(s), click on “Get Code” – if this does not show up, then go to “My sites”, located on the left side of the page
• Under your site(s) listed are several options, click on “get code”
  You’re given four choices of counter styles (if you don’t want the counter visible, consider upgrading to GoStats Pro) there are plenty of styles and colors to choose from
• Choose one and click on it
  You will be taken to a page with the counter code. Copy the second counter code - HTML counter codeThere are different instructions based on the Style system you are using. To check your style system go to Journal Display, click on “Basics” – it’s under Style System
• If you’re using S1:
  Please see LiveJournal FAQ # 188 for their instructions and tutorial
• If you’re using S2:
  Please see LiveJournal FAQ # 188 for their instructions on adding counter code, as well as to ensure that your layout supports counter code
• Refresh your blog page and voilà your hit counter should be visible
  Now you can sit back and continue blogging
  Don’t forget to view your stats, you can do this by accessing your GoStats account, and click on “my sites” and “stats”
  If you choose to receive weekly emails from GoStats about your hits, please add support@gostats.com to your safe email addresses to prevent it from ending up in your Spam folder