WHEN I FIRST MOVED the Canvey Beat from its old WordPress host to Blogger, it was knowing that the latter did not provide integrated visitor statistics. But against that I weighed the freedom of being able to host commercial advertising and post video and sound files if required.
I did miss the integrated statistic features in WordPress; but I located the free StatCounter that Blogger allowed me to incorporate in my Blog’s code and provide much more information on my guests; so I was a happy bunny – until Blogger recently got around to incorporate server-side statistics for my use.
Google’s Adsense program provides hosts with the number of impressions that have been served; how many clicks have been obtained; and how much has been earned in a period. But I did not consider comparing the impression count (which obviously compares to page-loads) to what StatCounter was recording. That is, until the gap between StatCounter’s accumulative page-loads and the Adsense impression count (which began much later) rapidly became much smaller.
It was then I noticed that the new Google statistics agreed with the Adsense figures – and that StatCounter was hopelessly out. It was only recording around a third of the page-loads being pulled from the Canvey Beat site.
Well, I knew that the StatCounter code had an inherent problem (because its code is client-side and contained in JavaScript). In an effort to overcome the problem (when clients have JavaScript disabled) StatCounter pulls a small image file from its main server and records that request instead. Unfortunately, both methods fail if the JavaScript fails to load or the small image is not downloaded. And that appeared to be happening frequently on the Canvey Beat site.
I do not believe this is a hosting problem. BlogSpot offers up to one-hundred simultaneous connections, which should be more than adequate for my needs. The Canvey Beat’s host stats indicate that a peak of 58 simultaneous connections was achieved by the Blog on Sunday; but I have not been monitoring previous situations to know if there have been instances much in excess of that. However, one thing is for certain, when there are a number of simultaneous connections to a page heavy in JavaScript (Adsense uses it too) load time suffers and impatient browsers will simply time-out.
I had my girlfriend conduct a test of the Blog during one of its evening peak periods (at around 7:30pm) to see what was happening to the StatCounter at the bottom of the page (I cannot influence it from my computer). To my consternation she reported that, of a dozen page-load requests, seven resulted in the StatCounter code timing-out. She was just left with a browser generated image place holder – and no idea of how many hits the site had had.
Needless to say, I have now removed the counter’s display from the Blog; but I am loathe to do away with the code completely because, although highly inaccurate, I still find it interesting to know where those recorded visitors come from – and who they are.
If you are already using StatCounter, or considering using it, on your site – I still recommend it as a statistical tool. However, I would advise against using it to display accumulative page-loads to your visitors. The chances are you will be understating your case considerably.
By the way, the new BlogSpot statistics (and Google’s Webmaster tools) are great…
