I've had a lot of people email me today to ask me 'what I use to monitor my hits'/'how I found out about the downloading'/'how do I know where my hits are coming from' kinda questions. (By the way, thanks for all the emails! Even with tracking my site and seeing how many hits I get, I was completely shocked by how many people emailed me and asked for an invite . . . I'm flattered, you guys! It means a lot that there's so many of you who want to know what's going on with my family, or at least what Annie's said or done most recently.)
Anyway. I use statcounter.com. In summary, the free version (which is right in my price range) keeps track of the last 500 page loads or something like that. (I change the setting so that it doesn't include my own page hits, 'cause that would just drive up my numbers and burn through my 500 freebies too quickly. Although, my ego did like the boosted numbers when I was still being counted.) I use one or two features nearly daily, randomly use a bunch of other ones, but don't really know all of what it's capable of telling me. The stuff I use most regularly though include the following buttons:
"Recent Pageload Activity"
I check this one almost every day. In order from most recent, it tells me the date, time, location and "Host Name/Web Page/Referring Link" -- which looks like this:
Comcast Cable (55.555.555.555) Mom's Work (This is the Host Name -- and you can label the IP address if you know who it belongs to . . . about half of mine are labeled.)
hilarysrandomthoughts.blogspot.com/ (This is the webpage, it's always this . . . I guess maybe I could have multiple sites on one statcounter account or something, I just have the one site though, so this is always the same.)
travelinglisa.blogspot.com/ (This is the referring link . . . either a blog that was linked to mine, an email or facebook page that someone linked off of, or there'll be "No referring link" listed her if someone just has the site bookmarked.)
It's that last one that tells me if something comes off of a google search or something. There is also a "Recent Keyword Activity" button that lists all hits that resulted from a search engine. It will also tell you exactly what the search was.
The next button I use is the "Download Activity". This one tells you, in order from most recent, any thing that was downloaded. I think this also just includes when people click on the photo to make it bigger. There's a little 'magnifying glass' icon next to each of these that will pull up the 'Visior Analysis.' This will tell you what website (if any) the user came from, the IP address, the city and state (or country) where the user is, and how many visits the user made to the site (in the last 500 though, since I'm cheap and it's free.)
If I use the "Download" button (versus the 'Download Activity' one), it lists all downloads from most frequently downloaded on down . . . which was surprising to me that a whole THIRTY people further checked out the flyer for my parent's house . . . which, by the way, is still for sale. There is an offer on it though, but it is contingent, so there's still a chance for you if you want it . . . :-) This was a distant second most popular download with 13 people downloading it.
If I'm really bored, I might look into "Recent Visitor Activity." Which'll tell me useful stuff like Jessi uses Comcast, usually exits the site from the comment page (thanks for the comments Jess!) and has contributed 255 hits to my total count (this feature seems to hold onto more info than just the 500 free pageloads info, 'cause it goes back forever.) This is WAY more detailed than I'd normally ever look into. Really, I just like to see where my the overall number of people coming in, and making sure it seems familiar . . . like most of the hits coming from West Jordan or Salt Lake or something, or linking from other blogs I read. And if there was a google search that snuck in (despite my site SUPPOSEDLY being unsearchable), it tells me exactly what the search was.
StatCounter'll also tell you all kinds of random stuff like what browser your readers are on, what size screen they're looking at your site on, you can search for usage by a specific IP address, and I find the map super fun. This is where I'm most bummed about the limited storage the site has, since I'd LOVE to see a map of all the hits that the site gets, not just the most recent. It's been fun to reach out to other Moms, distant relatives, old neighbors and friends of friends from across the globe.
Anyway. That conclude the lengthy tutorial for the day. :-) Hope it answered some of the questions I got!
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