Came From - no stats from External - Aha! Check this out

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webado

webado

Moderator
#1
#1
I am not reporting a bug here. I am reporting a little funny discovery which I am sure will solve this problem for many users who've been puzzled by it.

You're looking at your Came From stats, and naturally you only want to see external sites. The list is empty!

You uncheck Show external sites - and then you see you have a ton of entries AND a bunch of external ones too! Is it a bug?

Nah! Take a look at the settings you have - where you defined what is to be considered an internal url.

I bet you have at least one blank line there, but you can't actually see it - as it's blank. Move the cursor to the end of the last line you see and try to go down from there. If there isn't any other blank line, you won't be able to go down at all. If you can highlight the next line and maybe others after that, you have blank lines - they will end up being interpreted as essentially "anything is internal". Delete all those blank lines and you'll have lovely Came From stats for all the external sites.

I wouldn't call this a bug, technically. Ok, it's an oversight on the part of Statcounter. Maybe it will even be fixed soon. But you will still have to make the correction yourselves to your settings since even if the program is modified now to ignore blank lines there, it will be for settings entered thereafter. Your data is already in the project settings in your account, and only you can fix it at this point with very little effort.
 
G

gurdyp

New Member
#2
#2
How to see visitors under Came From

Hi,

I'm wondering how I can get to see a list of the people/websites that visit my blog.

Whenever I click on Came From, it is blank, even after I unchecked the external sites box.

I'm not sure what you mean by looking for internal urls in my settings...? And deleting blank lines...? Could you lead me through it?

Thanks so much,
Kirsten

username: gurdyp
site name: notes from an exile
 
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webado

webado

Moderator
#3
#3
Edit the settings of your project (use the wrnech icon and then Edit Settings). You have a box, right below the name of the project, where you put the url of the site and any other url's that you consider internal to your site. This is where you must have a blank line. Hightlight all, make sure there's no extra blank line either at the top or at the bottom. Go to the end of the last line and delete a few characters to make sure there's no carriage return character (invisible) that may be there.
 
M

mflaherty

New Member
#4
#4
Having the same problem re: came from...no external referral

Hi,

I'm a new-today user, so I really may be missing something here. But, I read the posts about the blank lines and confirmed that I didn't have any in the URL listing.

I've also tried using different versions of the script (with w/out frames) just to see if that made a difference.

my username: mflaherty

Would appreciate any other advice.

Thanks!
Mary
 
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webado

webado

Moderator
#5
#5
Your domain itself is using frames to display pages from your hosting since you have no name servers for it. This is called framed (or masked) url forwarding.

You cannot use the frames version of the counter because getting referrer information across different domains (www.kezarlakehouse.com which is your domain and http://home.att.net/ which is your hosting) does not work, it's not suppsoed to work either, part of internet security protocols.
Therefore you have to use the regular counter code. So no referrer information for you.

Your only solution is to get proper hosting which has name severs that you cna use to point your domain properly so you don't need to use framed url forwarding.
 
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gurdyp

New Member
#7
#7
Came from

Hi,

I'm still wondering if there is some way I can see who has visited using Came From.

I've checked that I didn't have any blank lines in the URL listing, as you suggested. At the moment, however, I have only the HTML code counter. Do I need to use the W3C to see referrals? And what does it mean, "Maintaining correct line breaks in your code are crucial if you want to use W3C valid HTML."?

How can I make the Came From function work? Any other suggestions would be most appreciated.

Thanks!

User name: gurdyp
blog title: notes abbreviated
 
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webado

webado

Moderator
#8
#8
The hmtl-only counter CANNOT track any url information: this means no pages that were visited, nor the referrer. All you will get is the time of the hit and the IP address, and any information that can be deduced fromt the IP address (geo location). That's it.

You need the javascript portion that comes with the full version to track everything else.

You need to generate and install the full counter, do not select html-only.
 
G

gurdyp

New Member
#9
#9
So -- by the 'full counter' you mean the w3c? Or do you mean a counter that you don't actually get with the free version of SC?

I have tried installing w3c once, but it didn't seem to work. I will try it again, though.
 
C

cooker23

New Member
#12
#12
Man I had the same problem. I saw those checkboxes and just assumed you HAD to select one of them! I choose HTML because it was the only one I felt totally comfortable with!

I would suggest to the StatCounter.com person/team to make it a little more explicit that you do not need to check one of those checkboxes and that simply clicking on to the next page will give you the correct code!

happy new year

T.M.
 
A

andersonmaterials

New Member
#13
#13
Question Regarding "Came From" Feature

I just had a question that I didn't see answered anywhere else that I visited on this forum:

1) How long does the "came from" feature save the data that it gets?

The reason I'm asking this question is because I have 10+ other domains registered to me that I'm forwarding to one domain (which has the statcounter on it). I want to see which of my domains are actually worth keeping (i.e. actually get traffic).

Thanks

ps. - I can't put statcounters on any of my other domains because they're registered under yahoo! and they have their own starter webpages that you can make (so no html coding allowed)... that's another reason that I need the statcounter "came from" feature working right for me...
 
webado

webado

Moderator
#14
#14
It's all from the log contents (a.k.a. Recent Pageloads). No time frame, but always the latest 100 hits (or whatever your log maximum is).
 
E

ellblee

New Member
#15
#15
Hi,

I was so happy to find this thread bc I've been wondering why I can't view Came From Stats. However, I've tried all your suggestions and I have no extra blank spaces in my internal url settings and I reinstalled the code to make sure I hadn't selected HTML only or W3C or anything. It's the full javascript code.

I selected the no frames version, too.

Is there something else that could be blocking the stats? Thanks!

username: ellblee
url: http://thewindowseatblog.blogspot.com/
 
E

ellblee

New Member
#17
#17
My Came From option is working now. Yay!

Here's a silly question though. I see all these sites under "Came From," but when I go to those sites, I see no link to my site. Isn't came from supposed to show where people clicked a link to your site or is it just the site the visitor was at before your site?

Thanks!
 
webado

webado

Moderator
#18
#18
Take a look at that link that all blogs on Blogspot have: Next Blog. Yours and all other blogs there are linked on a random basis to other blogs.

That's how your visitors are hitting your blog, not through explicit links they may have seen on some other blog, but just randomly through that link.
 
webado

webado

Moderator
#20
#20
I see the code - the html-only version - on your site. Unless your site has bad validation errors, it should work. It will not give you any referrer information because you cannot have that with the html-only version of the code - ever. The javascript portion is required for that.

Unfortunately your page has quite a few validation errors: http://validator.w3.org/check?verbose=1&uri=http://trinitydoll.livejournal.com/
Not sure how serious any are to interfere with the Statcounter code.
 
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