Cookies

[typelogic]

I am a relatively new user, and I really like statcounter. I've been able to track referrers easily and have learned a lot about where my hits are coming from. Thanks!

I have a question about the cookies. It appears that my unique visitors count is inflated because of them. My browser (IE6) privacy is set to medium--I think that was the default. And by default, according to IE6's privacy report, statcounter's cookies are being blocked.

I'm not sure what data your cookies collect, or what is bouncing the cookie. This doesn't happen with most cookies, even from some of the strictly advertising ones from other sites. With my previous counter, I was getting about 50% unique visitors of all my hits: now it's less than 2%.

What gives? :?

--JAB

For almost all MSIE 6.0 users the StatCounter cookie is being set. Not sure why it isn't working for you. Are you sure you have the complete default settings?

[typelogic]

Maybe this isn't a problem with cookies.

What I can say is that my stats for reloads/return visitors is almost nonexistent (less than 2%) with statcounter as compared with 25% over the past five years with another counter.

Since the number of unique visits is based solely on a cookie, I assumed the problem was due to the cookie.

[Mystra]

For almost all MSIE 6.0 users the StatCounter cookie is being set. Not sure why it isn't working for you. Are you sure you have the complete default settings?

You know, I've seen this said before on threads here in this forum and I can tell you after testing on many machines THIS IS NOT TRUE.

Anyone with IE6+ with the default privacy settings WILL BLOCK your cookie, and skew the stats. It goes without saying 95% of my visitors have IE6+ with the default privacy settings. :roll:

I am very disapointed by this revelation, and if it isn't fixed by month's end I'm going back to sitemeter. I can't bear to look at my site with all those aweful privacy warnings at the bottom of the window.

[webado]

For almost all MSIE 6.0 users the StatCounter cookie is being set. Not sure why it isn't working for you. Are you sure you have the complete default settings?

You know, I've seen this said before on threads here in this forum and I can tell you after testing on many machines THIS IS NOT TRUE.

Anyone with IE6+ with the default privacy settings WILL BLOCK your cookie, and skew the stats. It goes without saying 95% of my visitors have IE6+ with the default privacy settings. :roll:

I am very disapointed by this revelation, and if it isn't fixed by month's end I'm going back to sitemeter. I can't bear to look at my site with all those aweful privacy warnings at the bottom of the window.

Ok, are you referring to the cookie that is set in order to let you stay logged in? or the cookie set in order to stop logging your own visits? or cookies that may be set for other visitors?

There are only 2 ways to avoid having your visits logged: by a cookie or by ip address. The latter will not work unless you have a static ip address that never, ever changes.

As for the cookie being needed to figure out unique visitors vs repeat visitors, well, a different solution would involve extensive database searches which would be time consuming and hog the system. And it will also have to be based on an ip address which better be static for this to work.

You say that the vast majority of your visitors block cookies? Maybe in your case this may be so, but surely you cannot claim that they also benefit from static ip addresses. And if they don't have a static ip address, without the benefit of a cookie, there's no way on earth you can get a proper picture of their activity.

In the meanwhile you may want to increase the Maximum Visit Length in your project settings. The recommended setting is 6 hours, this might work for you if you've set it lower.

[Mystra]

Thanks for the explainations (I want accurate return/unique visitor stats - I don't care if it records my own).

However, the nasty "privacy report" blocked cookie warning has not been addressed. I never had this problem with SiteMeter. It looks terrible, like my site is untrustworthy.