Do you have a visitor counter on your site?

[Grant]

Most sites back in the 90s and 2000s to my recollection always seemed to have a visitor counter, or a traffic counter. It would just be a small gif/graphic that shows when someone accesses the site. I think most of them just counted each time someone went to the site. And I think you could repeat going to the site over and over to inflate the numbers.

Do you guys use these counters today? I'm sure they're more advanced like block when someone with the same IP accesses the site multiple times a day.

 

[Busybee]

Visitor counters have become less prevalent for a few reasons. They can be easily manipulated or inflated, as you mentioned, and they often don't provide meaningful or actionable data beyond the total number of visits. Additionally, modern tracking tools offer a wealth of additional metrics and insights that can help website owners better understand their audience and improve their website's performance.

 

[Kane]

When I created a blog on blogger, which was my first blog, I had installed a visitor counter as well as a visitor flag. It felt a kind of satisfaction to see visitors from various countries. However, when I created my first self hosted blog, I never bothered with a visitor counter. I like checking my google analytics dashboard instead.

 

[Heatman]

I like checking my google analytics dashboard instead.

Checking your Google Analytics dashboard is always going to give you even more data than having that plugin in your website that helps you to check your visitors count because it will have a more broad view of the overview statistics that happened on your website through the Google Analytics dashboard.

 

[Kane]

Checking your Google Analytics dashboard is always going to give you even more data than having that plugin in your website that helps you to check your visitors count because it will have a more broad view of the overview statistics that happened on your website through the Google Analytics dashboard.

Actually, the visitor counter is not for website owners to check visitors, it is for other visitors who might make a judgment based on the statistics they see. Website owners need more data than just a visitor counter. By the way I have integrated plugins that allow me to c heck my visitor data without even visiting google analytics dashboard.

 

[Heatman]

Visitor counters have become less prevalent for a few reasons. They can be easily manipulated or inflated, as you mentioned, and they often don't provide meaningful or actionable data beyond the total number of visits. Additionally, modern tracking tools offer a wealth of additional metrics and insights that can help website owners better understand their audience and improve their website's performance.

I really wonder what's the purpose for a forum owner to put himself through with trying to have his visitors counter manipulated or inflated? To what end is it going to be? The inflated figures would never add any extra traffic more than the real number of users active.