Have you ever noticed that you don't see page counters on Yahoo, ESPN, or Disney's Web sites? Nor will you find one on IBM, Microsoft, or Cisco's pages. But you still see these counters on plenty of small to mid-sized businesses Web sites. I used to believe counters were implemented "because the designer could." But after researching the issue a bit, I found out that many of these firms believe the counter to be the main method for collecting site usage statistics. If you are not aware of the alternative for collecting site usage statisitics, read on.

• when they came (month, day, year, time)
• where they came from (referrer)
• who they are (their IP address)
• what browser they are using
• what pages they access (page requests)
• what files make up those pages (hits)
• what search string they used to find you
• what page they exit your site from (exit/abandon page)

Once log file information has been collected, it can be concatenated, parsed into usable statistics, and presented as graphic and/or alpha-numeric tables. This information can be displayed in most Web browsers and often output to popular spreadsheet formats.

Once you have this information at your fingertips, you can get rid of that counter forever. If you need help with your server log files, making sense of them, or wonder how to exploit them, please contact us for a FREE consultation.