ArsGeek

I realize this might be a “duh” article yet I’m posting it anyway.

If you’re a website owner or have a profile… any where SiteMeter is tried and true. I’ve had the free/basic service for 8 years now and after trying out other stat keepers, none have measured  up to the information I’ve been able to obtained through SiteMeter.

Useful situations: If you’ve blocked your creepy ex’s e-mail address and can recognize his/her IP from the full header of the message, you can easily see that they’ve been visiting your site, when, what pages and how often they’ve been reading your every word. You can also get a good idea when their IP address has changed and what the new one is to deny access to your site. 

My main purpose is to get an idea of what the people like and why they head my way. So far it’s mainly because of Betta Fish

I’ve tried just about every other service out there and this still remains on top. The logo/stat meter is relatively small and easily hidden within a CSS. I’ve used one for all social networking profiles and my website without needing multiple accounts.

The upgrade price varies depending on page views and can range between $6.95 - $199.95 per month. Give it a chance, try it out for a month and then you’ll see how other trackers just don’t seem to compare; unless of course there’s one that easily does the same thing in such an organized manner with all the perks and is totally free. If you know of one, let me know!

If you’re interested or have an account:
Site Meter news/announcements
http://weblog.sitemeter.com/2008/05/01/beta-test-volunteers/
Beta Test Volunteers?
We would like to begin building a list of 100 brave souls to participate in our upcoming beta test. The testing will require volunteers to be accessible via email, a willingness to paste new or additional code on their site pages, and to provide detailed written feedback on results. We do not anti…

Below are some screenshots from the main demo area. If you like easy to read and understand formats that contains a wealth of data, Sitemeter is for you. The free version does have its draw backs by only holding onto approximately 100 detailed visitors at a time. This of course didn’t use to be the case and I haven’t found it to be as inconvenient as I had initially thought it’d be when they made this change.