Site Statistics

I recently removed the external web counter I had been using on this blog. I became increasingly concerned that I wasn't getting the full picture (see below).

Even so I removed it mainly because I discovered (or should that be re-discovered) that Google had integrated (very) basic page stats into their Blogger platform; there's no point in duplication really.  These stats nicely compliment the RSS readership data I review from time to time.

Unlike the external counter, the Blogger stats cover all visits since the blog started in 2007 and one of the more interesting things I uncovered was how popular my various static pages are:

Obviously, the older pages have had more visitors but overall I'm more than happy with the popularity of the static pages. It's always nice to know that the effort in writing and maintaining them has been useful to others.  The most popular static page is even in the overall top twenty but not quite into the top ten:

Finally, I suspect the Google stats are more accurate as they come directly from the logs of the web server.  There's nothing that unusual going on here.  To view a page you must request it from the server.  In doing this certain details are provided to the server.  The number of requests is what is being recorded in the log and as such it isn't susceptible to blocking by the user; unlike external web counters.