I don’t really care about the website visitor information for Rodeworks. Sure, I do check it on occasion, and I have adjusted my post schedule to match the days when traffic is heaviest (early in the work week.) I have been using the WordPress.com Stats plugin for a while, and have been pretty happy with the statistics it provides. But last week I decided to give it a test alongside Piwik and see how the two compare. Over the last 4 days here are the respective counts of unique website visitors:
| Counter | Fri | Sat | Sun | Mon |
| Piwik | 37 | 28 | 36 | 52 |
| WordPress Stats | 46 | 24 | 19 | 29 |
I guess it is no real surprise how much the two counters vary. And I bet the differences wouldn’t seem quite so big on a site with a lot more traffic (although I’m happy with my daily 30 – 50 during the week!) and over a longer time period. I find the PiWik stats page loads much faster than the Stats page. And PiWik’s counts are a little higher, so they make me feel more loved (OK, I do care a little about the numbers!) But I also wonder how useful these numbers really are, considering that there are multiple ways this web content gets consumed including:
#1 gets counted — the rest of them don’t. Now not all of these represent completed versions of the post (#6,7 and 8 are titles or excerpts only) but at least some of the content is out there. So back to the question — are the site hit counters (even Google Analytics) really giving the full picture? As social media tools allow content to get consumed in multiple settings is it even possible to keep an accurate or useful count? Maybe the time of the page count web analytic tool is coming to an end?
WordPress › WordPress.com Stats « WordPress Plugins
However I found that even though something like Google Analytics provides an incredible depth of information, it can be overwhelming and doesn’t really highlight what’s most interesting to me as a writer. That’s why Automattic created its own stats system, to focus on just the most popular metrics a blogger wants to track and provide them in a clear and concise interface.
WordPress › Piwik Analytics « WordPress Plugins
This is a basic wordpress plugin for the excellent Piwik web Analytics tool.
Piwik – Web analytics – Open source
Piwik is a downloadable, open source (GPL licensed) web analytics software program. It provides you with detailed reports on your website visitors: the search engines and keywords they used, the language they speak, your popular pages…
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Randall Rode's online home for thoughts, notes, and experiments with a wide range of technology topics. Visit the about page for info on my recent projects and professional background. I welcome your comments!
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