Stats visible for everyone?

[botenremko]

Hi!

Why can't I see the website statistics of many sites? Why don't they
have a counter on their pages that are visible to anyone?
What are pros and cons to publish online real time stats on your
website?

Remko

[John Dunlop]

bo********@gmail.com:

Why can't I see the website statistics of many sites? Why don't they
have a counter on their pages that are visible to anyone?

What are pros and cons to publish online real time stats on your
website?

I think the main objection is that people, including those who put
counters on their pages, readily misinterpret them. Web site
statistics are useful for monitoring server load, not the number of
people who have read the page. The number of people who have read the
page could be higher, could be lower, than the figure the counter
reports. There is no reliable way to find out how many people have
read a webpage (if you think there is, try keeping tabs on a printed
version).

Another objection is that people in general aren't interested in
statistics. Counters take up space and distract from the content
proper.

--
Jock

[Beauregard T. Shagnasty]

bo********@gmail.com wrote:

Why can't I see the website statistics of many sites?

Perhaps they don't include statistics in the page code?

Why don't they have a counter on their pages that are visible to
anyone?

Perhaps they do not wish to appear amateurish?

What are pros and cons to publish online real time stats on your
website?

Pro: you don't have to look at your own site logs.
Con: you look like an amateur.
Con: you add page bloat.
Con: statistics are almost always misleading.

Why would anyone else be interested in your site statistics?

--
-bts
-Motorcycles defy gravity; cars just suck

[Sherm Pendley]

bo********@gmail.com writes:

Why can't I see the website statistics of many sites?

Could be that the sites owners think it's none of your business.

Why don't they
have a counter on their pages that are visible to anyone?

Because counters are inaccurate to the point of being useless. What's
more, they're so trivially easy to fake that no one believes them.

What are pros and cons to publish online real time stats on your
website?

For what purpose? I find it difficult to believe that your visitors
actually care about that information, and advertisers generally serve
their own banner images and track the stats themselves.

sherm--

--
Web Hosting by West Virginians, for West Virginians: http://wv-www.net
Cocoa programming in Perl: http://camelbones.sourceforge.net

[deko]

Why can't I see the website statistics of many sites? Why don't they

have a counter on their pages that are visible to anyone?
What are pros and cons to publish online real time stats on your
website?

I found a lightweight (no database) PHP-based counter/visitor log here:

http://www.clearpointsystems.com/software.php#viscount

Look at the example output - as a webmaster, I think this is useful information.
Visitors might be interested, too. So I see no "cons" to displaying real-time
visitor stats on your site. Just put it on its own page. If people don't want
to see them, they won't look.