Support :: Hit Counters

Hit Counters, Against, Cons and Disadvantages
Many people seem to like having hit counters on their websites, though it is very hard to understand why. Unfortunately no type of hit counter can give you an accurate idea of how well your website is doing. Counters can have a detrimental effect on your site. It may not look good if your site is new or if your counter rolls over its limit or needs resetting for a potential customer to visit your site and see that only 2 people have visited your site. (It may not actually be the case that only two people have visited your site, please read on for an explanation of why this may be the case)

NOTE: The counters on this page are for demonstration purposes only and in no way purport to accurately represent the true number of visitors to this site. In fact the whole purpose of this page is to demonstrate the inaccuracy and unreliability of hit counters.

The counters on this page are periodically reset to zero.

In this page you will find several different types of hit counter together with the reasons why they do not give the information that you might expect..

The endless tumbler
This type of hit counter is in fact strictly a joke. It is not in fact a counter at all but simply an animated image that does not count at all. Its purpose is to make it look like there are an immense number of visitors accessing the site so fast that the counter cannot keep up with them and the numbers go fast in a blur! As far as supplying useful information about your website either to you or to your visitors is it obviously completely useless.

Pseudo counter:

The fixed counter
Some websites have counters that do not if fact count. They are simply a number displayed on the page. Always this will be a suitably impressive number in the thousands to show visitors what an impressive site they have and how immensely popular they are.

The Random number counter
This kind of counter is closely related to the fixed counter with a slight twist. To stop the counter from appearing obviously static the counter will display a random number, again in the thousands. After all you wouldn't want your brand new unvisited site to look unpopular would you?

The instant hit counter
This second type of counter is perhaps the most popular and misleading type of counter used on the web. The counter increments every single time that a web page is accessed. Try hitting the refresh button on your browser a few times or pressing F5 on your keyboard and you will see what we mean. You are obviously one visitor but the counter records every single access to the page. This type of counter has the tenancy to give the impression that there have been far more visitors than there have actually been. As far as supplying useful information about your website either to you or to your visitors is it obviously completely useless.

The Cookie Counter
This third type of counter works in a somewhat different way. This counter records the visit of a specific computer. What it does not tell you however is somewhat more interesting. It does not for example tell you how many people using that computer have viewed your site. The computer could for instance be located in an office or an internet cafe where multiple visitors may use the computer to visit your site. They will unfortunately be counted by this type of counter as only one visit, at least until tomorrow when the same computer will be counted again should it visit your site then. As far as supplying useful information about your website either to you or to your visitors is it obviously completely useless.

The IP Counter
This type of counter has lots and lots of problems. This counter counts the IP address of each visitor. Unfortunately this type of counting cannot be accurate. Many ISPs (Internet Service Providers) use a technique called caching so that they can cut down on their bandwidth usage and speed up their systems in serving content to their subscribers. This leads to the problem that the IP Address visiting a website may not be the IP Address of the person browsing the internet but in fact the IP Address of the ISPs Caching Server. This leads to the interesting situation where hundreds, thousands or even hundreds of thousands of people appear to have the same IP Address. (An interesting variation of this problem is the AOL multi proxy, this is when someone on an AOL account accesses your page and in an attempt to speed up their service AOL tries to get the content of your site with up to 7 different servers. This makes is appear that you have had 7 visitors instead of the one visitor that has actually been to your site.) As mentioned at the beginning of this page it makes it technically possible for several hundred thousand people to visit your site but for only 2 or 3 hits to register in your hit counter. As far as supplying useful information about your website either to you or to your visitors is it obviously completely useless.

Lets complicate matters slightly by displaying the number of hits from the currently accessing IP address. Again the information from this technique is suspect as it only tells you how many times each IP has viewed your page. Not if it was the same person or not or even if it is just someone clicking Refresh on your browser. Try it for yourself and see how it changes the two respective counts.

The true IP Counter
This type of counter sounds more likely to provide an accurate result doesn't it? It certainly has an impressive name and it even has the word "TRUE" in it! Well unfortunately (Again) this type of counter has many problems of its own. It counts each different IP or visitor address as a single visitor. Fair enough you might think. What if that visitor comes back? What if more than one person uses that address? What if someone comes to your website time after time, contacts you each time, reads your site each time you provide new content on your site. Was that really just one visit. This type of counter has a tendency to make it look as though very few people visit your site. This may not look good to your visitors. As far as supplying useful information about your website either to you or to your visitors is it obviously completely useless.

The number of hits per each true IP address is equally uninformative as all the other counters and for much the same reasons.

Roundup
It can be tempting for people to ask for a hit counter to be added to their website however as demonstrated above there are flaws in all types of hit counter and the information provided by them is misleading at best and embarrassing at worst. While all website usage statistics are subject to qualification and interpretation the common hit counter provides some of the most misleading and doubtful information possible.

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