Simple Site Statistics

A couple of days ago, I added a small page visit counter to the site called GoatCounter. Like many people, I don’t like it when people or corporations collect my info in order to track me. So, why would I add something like this to my own site? I suppose I can divide this into two parts: Why I think GoatCounter itself is okay to use, and why I want to track page visits in the first place.

First, why is GoatCounter okay to use? I think the main reason is that I’m purely using it to count the number of visits each page receives anonymously. Also, GoatCounter is open-source, and no data is shared with third-parties! Although it is capable of providing a little bit of extra information about each visitor (such as their language, location, system, browser, and screen size), I’ve disabled all such metrics. The only information that gets stored is the time and date that each page is visited, and the site that referred a visitor to mine (if applicable). Just to be totally transparent about the data I have, I’ve also made the dashboard public at https://triptechwiki.goatcounter.com.

Second, why do I want to track page visits? Mostly, I’m just curious to know if anybody visits the site at all. In the case that pages are being seen, I think it could be useful to know which pages are being visited most often so that I know what people like. After doing some looking, I’ve found similar sentiments shared on the wikiblogarden and on arp242’s blog, who made GoatCounter.

If after all my babbling and justification you still don’t like the idea of being counted, that’s okay! I’m pretty sure most ad-blockers and some browsers already block GoatCounter, including my own. In fact, I actually had to try a few different browsers before any statistics showed up.

Speaking of, I have a hunch that the type of people who would be visiting the small web are also the type of people who know a thing or two about privacy, and therefore an ad-blocker or better browser installed. So, this little counter might not really show any results at all! I guess we’ll have to wait and see…