Traffic Counters Vs Spyware

Wow, I'm up early today, so I will probably be gracing you with many wonderful posts throughout the day. I wanted to touch on a subject I received an e-mail about yesterday. A subscriber of mine wanted a little information on traffic and web trackers for their new blog. We all know there are many trackers out there to help you keep track of your stats, but a lot of them these days also include some sort of spyware or tracking cookie. Personally I want to know that my readers aren't downloading anything intrusive onto their systems when viewing my blog.

When I first began blogging a few years ago, I used SiteMeter as my traffic counter of choice. I never had a problem with the service, but I won't even justify them with a linkback these days due to the fact they have indeed included a form of spyware with their service. Many other bloggers are now switching to another service thanks to the sell out. If you do use SiteMeter, I suggest you check out Eric Odom's posts about the service. These days all of my blogs currently run on StatCounter. I began tracking my stats with them months ago, and now they are the only service I ever use. I am highly pleased with the service, and I switched 2 of my blogs over from Google Analytics. I am still okay with the Google Analytics service, but I don't recommend it for small time bloggers. I have had to help many friends understand the layout of the service. I think it is a bit much, and most of us don't need half of what the service has to offer. If you're not dealing with pay per click or adsense, there is just to much to have to sort through.

So, all in all, I am suggesting StatCounter as one of the best traffic statistics services out there. The platform is simple, easy to read, and even a very beginner blogger with little to no experience can figure it out. Stats are straight forward, and there are a lot of extra features to help track various things on our sites without the intrusion of spyware.

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