Statcounter Noob Question(s)

[WayOutWisdoms]

Hi all,

Being the wife and I are new to the whole affiliate marketing gig, we are roughly a month into our efforts in getting some blogs and content out there. Bare with me, as this is a bit lenghtly to try and explain.

We just started registering our URL's with the major search engines, blog registries, and have have thrown a few free ads out there to exploit our site(s).

We're starting to see a trickle of traffic, finally.

In the last 3 weeks we've seen a steady "increase" of 50 page loads per week. Hence 2 weeks ago we had 100, last week 150, and this week we're approaching the 200 mark. (Still a far cry from what we're looking to acheive of course)

But, now our 'free' Statcounter is near the 500 mark. We're tight for cash, and trying to let the business pay for the business, where we naturally intend to upgrade later to a paid service, once we start making some money.

For now I have 2 concerns.

1.) When my counter is full, can I start over with a new counter on that URL?

2.) Being we are using free blogs for now to learn the ropes, I created my HOMEPAGE, using the Blogs URL = [http//example.blog.com]

Then I created 10 more blog URL's using the same base 'example.blog.com" concept but added a numerical value to the end of the original address like so:

'example1.blog.com' (using the numbers 2-10.)

It was a lenghtly process, but I found by copying and pasting my original page into the HTML Template of my new blog pages 1-10, I could simply remove all widgets, and info, and have another 10 pages giving the blog some depth like a website and have all the variables/colors matching etc.., where I could give the visitors different options.

(and have more exit links and ad campaigns of course, lol)

Here's my problem. Because the URL's are different, each time someone uses the navbar buttons to explore another page, I can track there entry/exit links, but keep getting a ton of page loads on the counter reading '0', as they go in and out of other areas of my site. I don't understand how a page load can register on the counter, but display '0' seconds?

Should I put a different counter on each page?

Currently, I have the same counter&code on each page. I increased the unique visitor to 1 hour to ensure not to be logging the same user as a unique more than once per visit.

But this doesn't solve the high number of page loads as people click a link, come back, change pages, and with 1 vistor I registered like 10 page loads in a matter of 5 minutes. I'm happy to see this, yet it's killing me because now the counter is almost maxed out...and I still don't have enough info to know what's working and not working.

I think this is an awesome 'free' service, and cannott really complain as such, but what do I do until I can increase my knowledge of what my traffics doing, earn a little revenue to afford upgrading to paid tools, and still use the 'free' service without abusing the priviledge?

I mean I don't want to create a new counter every week once I get my traffic flow going. Nor can I afford to pay for a service, until I am making money with the bizness.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. I would almost prefer it counted the vistor, not the page load!

If I'm tracking the visitor's habits, it's great to know how many times they loaded a page, but at this point, I'd rather once they've loaded a page and returned, the count wouldn't keep going up.

Is there anything I can do on my end to set the counter differently to count the users rather than the page loads?


~T&A~ (Terri and Art)

[webado]

Statcounter doesn't' stop once you have hit the magic number of 500. All that number represents is the number of LATEST hits you will see at all times in the log.

Your project counter keeps incrementing forever. The daily history is maintained in summary stats (total hits, number of new unique visitors, number or returning unique visitors per day).

The detailed stats are only available for the content of the log which is at all times the LATEST 500 hits.

The log rolls, as a new hit gets logged, the earliest one gets removed. But it doesn't stop.

And you get this for every single project you have.

Visit length is defined as the time stamp difference between the first and last hit of a visit. A visit itself is s series of hits, each no more than 24 hours further from the pevious one.

All thsi is per project.

For this to work and be meaningful you have to use the same project on all pages of yrou website, not a different project on each page.

If you have more than one website but you consider them together as one site, then you need to use the same project on all those sites as well.

[WayOutWisdoms]

Cool Thanks, I was a touch confused as to how that worked.

[WayOutWisdoms]

O.K. almost forgot...what is a page load that registers 0 seconds?

I still don't see how it registers, but shows no time.

[webado]

A single pagelaod by itself has no duration.

The tracker logs the timestamp when it happened. It doesn't know how long somebody has been staring at a page (there is no connection to the server past the initial request fro the page), only when they click a link to go to another page that also has the same tracking project on it (so it logs that entry as well) can it be said they stayed on the first page for the time between when they entered the first page and the time they entered the second page.

To compute a visit duration you need 2 or more pageloads by the same visitor. With just one pageload the visit is computed as 0 seconds. Nothing else can be said about its duration even if the visitors kept it up for hours in their browser - that is time spent on their computer, not on the website itself

[howard]

I'm surprised these questions aren't more adequately answered during the project creation phase, they come up so often. Or are they - I haven't done so in a while.

[webado]

The visit length is explained on the visit length detailed report page.

What can I learn from the 'Visit Length' stat?
The time between when a visitor accesses your first webpage of their visit, and when they access the last is what we call the 'Visit Length'. Unfortunately it is not possible to detect with the Standard StatCounter Project when they left your website for a different website. Instead we take the time they accessed your last webpage of their visit as their 'exit time'. Although this isn't 100% accurate it is very close and nonetheless provides a valuable insight into your visitors.

Based on this information you can see how much 'pull' and 'interest' your website is generating for your visitors. If you have a low 'Visit Length' you may want to think up more ways to encourage your visitors to stay around for longer. Offer them something more.

Common problem with Visit Length Stats
If you only install the StatCounter code on one page of your website and your visitors never reload that one page, or if your visitor only viewed a single page just once without reloading it, . Then your visit length will always be less than 5 seconds - actually it will be reported as 0 seconds! It is highly recommended to install the same code on all pages of your website you want to track.

What missing from there is what I have in pink.

[howard]

The pink should be added, and also something about when you reach your 500 limit, the oldest rolls off as the newest is added to the top. Which, by the way, is the way many forum software are configured, this one's not - you have to delete a PM or two when your box is full or you don't get any more. I think they should roll off like the stats, replaced with the newest, so you have only the latest 50 PM's, or 25, or whatever it's set to.

[webado]

The PMs are vBulletin's business. I don't think it's configurable.

The information on Statcounter itself is all there, though porbably it doesn't stand out at the right time.