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Are Website visitor counters still useful for websites?

froggyboy604

froggyboy604

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I don't think website visitor counters which show the number of visitors to a site are useful to visitors these days.

But, invisible counters/visitor analytic tools like Google Anylitics, Statscounter, and Alexa for collecting visitor numbers, and other stats like refferal links, and bounce rates are useful for web masters, and website owners since these tools tell you where your visitors are coming from, what pages they view on your sites, and how long they use your website for.
 
Only if you want to sell your site would a public count be good, otherwise Google Anylitics for the web owner is pretty good and should be used for advertising needs.
 
No, they're a useless stat. What info do you get from hits? It's a meaningless number which could come from bots as far as you know. Services like Google Analytics give you useful information like where your users are coming from and where they spend the most time. You should definitely go with those and get proper info.

Not to mention the counters look tacky and stink of 'my first website.'
 
Forum softwares such as phpbb and the old school ones. Which also includes xenforo have these stat counters. All the next gen forum apps which I am using for my anime forum is doesn't have that. it is completely useless stat which provides nothing and takes up memory. Analytics such as Google etc. Are very helpful though they give clear sight of what's going on.
 
I think most of the forum visitor counters are able to be disable by editing your footer, or sidebar section on your forum's theme for phpBB, and other forum software, or by looking in the admin section to disable counters.
 
froggyboy604 said:
I think most of the forum visitor counters are able to be disable by editing your footer, or sidebar section on your forum's theme for phpBB, and other forum software, or by looking in the admin section to disable counters.
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It is better to disable/remove it, pointless counter has 0 value in forum growth.
 
Massacre said:
It is better to disable/remove it, pointless counter has 0 value in forum growth.
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I agree website counters are generally pointless.

But, they can be a useful when your local news channel, newspaper, and other news source talks about a website visitor numbers and used the counter as its source since a lot of the times the news say that a new website or app gets thousands of visits a day who use the website or app. If the news say that a website has many visitors a say, people watching the news may more likely check out a website.
 
Sites that still use visible website visitor counters are just unprofessional to be honest. I doubt that their even useful anymore especially considering how inaccurate they are
 
Demon_Skeith said:
I think they might still be useful for blogs, but thats about it.
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A lot of blogs sometimes sells advertising links, and banners, so counters can be useful for some advertisers who want to buy an advertising link on a website with lots of traffic.

Readers may more likely read a blog with a lot of traffic on it because they may think a blog is good if it has a lot of visitors.
 
Demon_Skeith said:
If you plan to sell on blogs, you'll need google analytics for that.
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I think Alexa.com is also useful since any ad buyer can just type in the domain name of a website, and know if it has how much traffic it gets.

Plus, untrustworthy, website owners may scam advertisers by saying they have a lot of traffic, and giving them fake Google Analytics graph, and traffic numbers.
 
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