About once a week, I get a call from someone asking me to add a hit counter. You know, those “you are visitor #2,346 to this site” messages? The answer is no.
Hit counters have many problems, as I often explain. First off, the average Web site visitor doesn’t have enough context to understand the counter. Why should I care that I’m #2,346? Does that make me special?
Second, what is that number intended to mean? If I’m visiting Ma and Pa’s Deli site, maybe being #2,346 represents more visitors than have ever trudged through the sagging screen door. But on our LLS Public sites, that’s less than 30 minutes of traffic. Not so impressive, but the point is that as a visitor, I don’t know whether to be impressed or break into the Hee Haw theme song. And of course, some of the counters thoughtfully provide a starting point: “…since March 24, 2001.” That’s supposed to help, but I get all lost in the meaning of that date. Is it when the site was last updated? Is it when the site was first released? Dick Van Dyke’s birthday? (It’s probably the date the counter widget was inserted and has no other special meaning. But I don’t know that.)
Third, with the remote caching done by AOL and others, as well as dynamic IPs and other resource sharing, there’s not a lot of confidence that I really am visitor #2,346. But by now I’m feeling protective of my status and thinking of getting a t-shirt made up for myself. Of course, when I come back later and I’m now visitor #2,961, I’m going to have a whopping identity crisis.
Link to a Web stats page if you want, or have an unpublished link to your stats page. That way, the business people who want to crunch numbers can do so. But don’t waste valuable Home Page space on it.
