Reporting and Stats

[70sFlashback]

Hey John,

Question...I was thinking about "burning" my feed for alternate stats but was wondering if it's worth the effort considering that BlogHarbor may be coming out with upgraded reporting stats (is that true?), is that something I should consider?

Since I get significant reads via RSS I it was a consideration then I would need to hack the base template and such for the AutoDiscovery tag config and hack the Dymanic RSS component.

What do you think?

Regards,

TL

[Roaring Tiger]

There's a lot I like about BlogHarbor's stats but I'm also using a third-party stats service because of some of BlogHarbor's limitations. What I like from 3dStats, my provider is:

* The ability to track web pages I create and also file downloads (I have some PDFs on my site).
* Reporting period flexibility (day, week, month, year, and also any period I stipulate).
* Graphs.
* More detailed user and referrer information.
* No referral spam junking up my stats.
* Ability to make estimates on future traffic based on past performance.
* Page navigation information.

What frustrates me about 3dStats though, is no info on the RSS feeds so their stats are incomplete.

Don't get me wrong...love ya lots, John...but would like to either see BlogHarbor grow its own stats (and I'd be willing to pay a little more for the detail), or else form an alliance with a stats provider that could deliver the details including RSS.

RT

[john]

[john]

[70sFlashback]

Thanks John for answering my question. But your response to the second post may have answered another question I was about to ask and that was about 3rd party tracking code like sitemeter or statscounter.

I was going to ask which page templates should code be added to in order get accurate stats but it sounds like there are limitations anyway. I use Statcounter mainly to track which keywords are sending me traffic, additional insight into referrals and a few other things like "retention". What these services don't do is accurately track the traffic for "unique visitors". Statcounter is off by several thousand even though I can get resonable feedback on how my blog is being reached.

I just added sitemeter about 4 days ago or so to see how it would do and it's just not even close.

Are there additional page templates that should have tracking code added besides "base" to get accurate tracking or is situation that it really doesn't matter because these sevices can never fully capture the "two party" interaction between your servers and unique visitors?

Thanks!

~TL

[john]

As I have said before, web stats reporting is as much an art as it is a science for the reason that the http protocol is a stateless protocol. When a browser requests a file from a web server, once the file is sent the transaction is finished. Any subsequent requests from the browser are completely independent and have nothing to do with previous requests. Server logs show a series of discrete requests, but interpreting those requests can be very subjective even when the interpreting is done by software.

Are there additional page templates that should have tracking code added besides "base" to get accurate tracking

Every page is served with the base template, so you really only need to modify the base template to add a third party javascript or image. You don't even have to do that, you can just create a custom component and add it to your sidebar, header, or footer.

...these sevices can never fully capture the "two party" interaction between your servers and unique visitors

Third party services all do just fine tracking HTML requests when the HTML request itself triggers an action like the load of a Javascript or an image. But an image load by itself can not trigger another action, so when the browser requests an image, the only service that can hear that request is the web server to whom the request is made.

[70sFlashback]

Thank you.

[roaring tiger]

Hi John,

Hadn't cycled back recently to this thread and just saw your question.

To track pdf files, 3dStats converts my web page link generated in BlogHarbor and converts it to a 3dStats link code. I then reinsert the new file link into my web page code.

It's been slick for me since I had a blog with numerous pdf files and wanted to track downloads.

If anyone is looking for a third-party tracker, I recommend 3dStats. I've tried StatsCounter and FreeStats and didn't like either. You've got to pay for 3dStats but it's only $9 per month until you get to 20k page loads. Another free option is Site Meter.

[70sFlashback]

Thanks, I'll check it out.