At the time of creating the site, a number of questions arise, including whether built-in traffic counters are needed on the web resource. And sometimes it is not easy for the website developer to prove to the customer their importance and necessity.
What is a counter and its varieties
In general, a counter for a site is a special service designed to keep track of site visitors. Often, it is nothing more than a graphic banner. It can be small or large, paid or free. For example, Yandex. Metrica and liveinternet are the most popular counters today, which are provided free of charge.
The counter records the number of site visitors per month, year or for the entire lifetime of the resource. Its main function is collection and statistics of site visits, how many unique users visited it and in what time frame. This data is transmitted to the server and recorded there using a script.
There are three types of counters for collecting site statistics:
- Counter-picture is an open counter that shows the number of website visitors. Its dignity is openness to all those interested.
- Counter-program code - created in PHP, can be either on a third-party resource or embedded in the site code. Visitors entering the site do not see it.
- Combined counter - combines the first two types. The visit code is located on a third-party resource, and visitors see a picture with the visit results when they enter the site.
How important is the information recorded by the counters
The owner of the resource or the person involved in its optimization is very interested in this information, because it is believed that otherwise it would not be possible to find out the history of visiting the site. However, this is not entirely true. You can request statistics of visits to the site from the hosting on which it is located.
Using the counter, you can find out the IP address of the computers from which the resource was visited. The Resource Optimizer can get information about the keywords for which visitors came to a given site.
Paid services greatly expand the possibilities. You can find out from which region the most visitors were, what gender and age they were, which browser they used, from which site they got to this resource and where they went afterwards.
It should be said that the counter of visits to the site is very convenient and useful for work. Thanks to the data obtained, the webmaster or optimizer will be able to update the site's content so that the resource will take higher positions in the rating in the future. After all, the site should always be relevant, and its rating should always be high.
