Confused New User

[Annied]

My previous stats counter is shortly withdrawing it's free service, so I was delighted when I came across StatCounter earlier today. I added the code to my website and uploaded the pages and it appears to be working well.

Where I'm running into trouble is working out what the stats actually mean! On 23 Nov I apparently had 64 page loads and 64 unique visitors. Is each page hit considered to be a "unique visitor" to that page, rather than to the website as a whole? (It seemed clear from the Visitor Page that some visitors had viewed several pages on the website.)

I'm also confused about the First time visitors and Returning visitors. These are shown as 39 and 25 respectively which rather neatly adds up to 64. It looks very much as though 39 people visited my website and, between them, viewed 25 extra pages in addition to their entry page. According to the explanation at the bottom of the Summary page, they must all have waited over an hour before returning to view the extra pages however! Since I was one of the visitors and I checked several new pages I'd uploaded in the space of about 5 minutes, I know this can't actually be the case.

Can someone help me out with an explanation please?

Ann

it's based on cookies, so if you your visitors have cookies disabled then you will get stats like that.

[Annied]

Thanks for the prompt response.

I understand the theory, that if a visitor has disabled their cookies then the counter won't be able to recognise them as they move from one page to another on the website.

I can't speak for the visitors, but I know my cookies aren't disabled. Since the counter was activated yesterday, I've now had 135 page loads and 135 unique visitors, 79 first time visitors and 56 returning visitors. If I've understood you correctly, every single one of the visitors to my website, including me, must have disabled their cookies?!

If this sounds like a moan, I apologise - I'm grateful to have found StatCounter, I'm just trying to get my head around the data it's producing for me.

The main thing for me is to establish that there is a figure that shows the number of individuals who visit the website and the total number of pages viewed. If I use the first time visitors and page loads respectively, that gives me the info I need. I think!

Thanks for your patience - I appreciate it!

Ann

PS Just had a thought. If the cookies were disabled, wouldn't that mean that the referrers would be shown as blocked? One or two are, but, for the most part, I can see where my visitors have come from eg google, msn, other websites with links to mine.

well for some reason your StatCounter cookie isn't being set. I don't know why that would be.

Blocked referrers is a different issue to blocked cookies.

[Annied]

[quote="webmaster"]well for some reason your StatCounter cookie isn't being set. I don't know why that would be.quote]

Is there anything I can do to correct that?

Ann

have you looked at the FAQ about people using MSIE 6.0 and cookies.

what browser are you using?

[Annied]

I've checked the FAQ's, but I can't see anything that will help. I'm not too concerned about my own online visits being logged, they're very infrequent and I get enough visitors that it doesn't really affect the stats.

What concerns me most is that every page view from every visitor appears to be logged as a unique visitor. I feel sure this isn't meant to happen. (If it was, there would be no point in listing the two totals separately in the summary.) Can you suggest anything printable(!) that I could do to correct this.

Sorry to be a nuisance.

Ann

We'll have to look into this more - it does still look like a lot of MSIE 6.0 browsers aren't allowing the cookie to be set.

[Annied]

Thanks. Yes, I do have MSIE 6.0. I'll keep a watch to see if you find a way of getting around it.

Ann