How Many Visitors Does Your Blog Get?
How many people read your blog? Do you know? Do you care?
When I first started a blogger blog, I only knew people visited IF they left a comment.
The thing is, quite a small percentage of visitors actually leave a comment. In my experience it’s generally 10% or LESS.
So, how do you find out how many people are reading your blog?
If you have a Wordpress blog, it comes with it’s own statistics page which will give you some information.
Blogspot blogs don’t have this feature.
So many bloggers take advantage of one of the many statistics programs out there to give them some idea of how many visitors their blog is attracted. Many wordpress bloggers make use of these as well.
No statistics package is perfect so you’ll find some bloggers like to use several.
At the present time I am using Statcounter on both of my .com blogs. This is in addition to the wordpress stats.
Many stat tracking programs provide a basic service for free and charge for a premium service.
So far I’ve only ever used the free packages on my blogs. If you want to get more serious about blogging and marketing, it may pay to invest in a premium statistics service. Premium services can give you more information and greater log size (ie my free account with statcounter only gives me detailed information about my last 500 visitors).
What Information Does a Statcounter Give Me?
Different counters provide slightly different information but the basics are:
- Number of visitors in a day
- Number of page views in a day
- How people arrived at your page (if they clicked a link from another blog for example)
- Keyword activity (what search terms people used to arrive at your blog)
- Location of visitors (what country they’re from etc - which can be quite interesting)
How do I Install a Statcounter on my blog?
- Create a free account with someone like statcounter.com
- Once you’ve created your account you will be directed to the section which allows you to set up a statcounter widget
- Simply copy and paste the code provided into either a text box if you’re on wordpress or use “add an element” and then select “HTML” if you’re using blogger.
If you have any trouble or require more detailed instructions than this, please let me know.
Do I Have to Display My Visitor Count on my Blog?
No. How you display your visitor count is entirely up to you. You do have the option to display an invisible widget. You still need to add the code to your blog so that the stat counting program can register each page view. However, you can opt so that no one else can see it. Some programs will display an ad for their site (eg statcounter.com) in place of displaying the page views.
Simply out of laziness, I have my visitor number displaying so that I can see it when I’m at my own site. 
You can view your current stats via your account on the statcounters website and also sign up for emailed reports of your sites basic statistics.
Respond to My Poll
In keeping with this topic, I am curious as to how many visits those who read this blog get. Please take a moment to respond to the poll in my sidebar “how many visitors (per day) does your blog get?” An approximate average is perfectly fine. 
If you enjoyed this post, please feel free to leave a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader.
Comments
Trish, I would recommend you switch from sitemeter to statcounter. I was using sitemeter on Lightening’s Garden as I wanted to try something different. Then I discovered it has some kind of spyware (for want of a better word) built into it’s script. Statcounter will give you what you want in terms of search terms. You just click on “recent keywords” and it gives you a list. If you switch you don’t need to start from zero again either. You can set your counter to start from the number your current counter is up to.
Since launching my blog on 10 Feb the highest number of visitors in a day is 45 and the lowest is 1 (tragic huh?) For February I had 388 hits (18 days = avg of 21.5 per day) and so far for March I have had 264 (17 days = avg of 15.5 per day)
So for a new blog just over a month old I am happy with that - but I don’t know if thats good or bad compared to other new blogs.
I just use the standard wordpress stats - that gives me more than enough info for the moment.
Gemisht - I think you’re doing well for a new blog. Especially considering you don’t blog every day. There’s nothing tragic about having 1 visitor.
How come you did not mention Google Analytics? -_-
For myself, I use the following:
- Wordpress Stats
- Google Analytics
- Stat Counter
- Site Meter
And yeah Google Analytics is like totally awesome! 
Thanks for adding your experience to the conversation Deimos. The only reason I didn’t mention Google Analytics is because I’ve yet to try it for myself. It’s good to hear you find it good.
[…] asked us the number of visitors our blog gets a day and shared with us some tools to measure this figure. I find it strange that Google Analytics was not […]
I use ummm, Blog Patrol. I haven’t got as many visitors as I’d like (with the exception of yesterday which was over 130) I normally average about 25ish. Ideally I would like 100 consistent visits to my Blog daily. I dont always post daily so I guess that is the first thing I need to do, LOL.
Thanks for this post, i was wondering if I’d be better off with a different counter and now I know if I decide I want to change you have one to recomend.
I’ve not heard of Blog Patrol Amy. I think as long as it provides the information you require there’s no need to change. Unless of course they’re adding spyware type stuff to their code.
hey, thanks for the visit and the comment! Interesting we have two words common in our domain names. haha.
I use the wordpress stats and the sitemeter. But I don’t really give much thought about my stats.
Hi ceblogger and thanks for dropping by and leaving a comment. 
That is interesting about our names. I think you might be in the minority when it comes to bloggers and their stats. Many of us are a tad “obsessed” when it comes to stats.
Hey Lightening,
In answer to your question, according to my stats thingo I average over 125 uniques a day… but I have the most random blog in the whole world so I’m not surprised that its that low.
Does your stats system show you the number of visits and the number of unique visits?
Hi Amy,
I think a lot of blogs fluctuate in their daily stats. When I’m looking at the overall growth of my blog I tend to look at a whole month because even my weekly stats can fluctuate quite a bit.
In answer to your question, yes my stats show unique visits vs number of page loads as well as first time & returning visitors (although this isn’t very accurate because it relies on cookies).
Hi Lightening,
I actually use sitemeter and I’ve been very pleased with it. I think it’s very cool and useful to see what search terms people use to find my posts in various combinations. It also helps create post ideas incorporating those search terms.
I’m still not clear how to understand Feedburner stats. One day it will give me a number of subscribers I think I have, and a week or so later the numbers have fluctuated so much I wonder if I’ve said something wrong on my blog. I read a post on that topic recently, but can’t find it anymore, and still don’t get it. Since I’m on Wordpress, I’ve actually manually counted up all the subscribers shown on my dashboard to get a correct count. It’s going up and up and up.
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I had no idea until recently and I didn’t mind at all so long as I got a few comments.
When I had no comments I was very disheartened and discouraged but I am pleased I was able to hang in and dig deep and make some blogger buddies.
I have site meter and I have no idea how to check what keywords bring people to my site …but I am so curious LOL and I want blog fodder.
It is quite interesting to know these stats. But what can you do with the people who stay 5 secs or those who never comment -that is the 6 million $ question have to entice people to stay on.
My Little Drummer boys