oh dear, counting blog visitors

The fuzzy art of counting


Site meter is great fun, but if you work from more than one computer, you have to make sure you don't count your own visits. At least, that is the case if you want an honest look at the number of visitors to your blog. I made the mistake of not sorting out my second access point with Site Meter, so every time I posted or edited or checked visitors this weekend, it counted me. That makes 10 visits that are me, not real visitors. So although the counter says 1003, we're really at 993 and waiting for 7 more visitors to cross that magic 1000 threshold. Apologies for the slip-up!

A note to people who visit blogs: the initial count can be set anywhere by the site. So when I see that a corporate site's blog has had 1,000 visitors a week for the past 9 weeks, since it was set up, and a quick calculation of clients and partners shows how unlikely that is, I smell a rat. Was the starting number set at 5,000?

A final word on blog visitors: I've been using this blog as a laboratory and experimenting to see how many visitors I have just by chance and through family and friends. The next step is to build site traffic, using all the blogging tips around.

If you are interested, stay tuned.