BYTE MARKS
Sites' trackers collect data as you browse

By Burt Lum

The next time you're cruising the Internet, popping in and out of various sites, check to see if the sites you visit have a little icon on the bottom of their page.

Often inconspicuously positioned in a far corner, this icon is probably a link to a free Web tracker.

Trackers are applications used by webmasters to track traffic on their sites.

These statistics are important if you want to know how popular your site is and where your visitors are coming from.

The web trackers I am referring to are free services that you can use by adding code directly to your web pages.

Whether you're a surfer or a creator of Web sites, it's good to know what this code does and what sort of information you are leaving behind when you visit a site.

The reports generated by these services provide key information on whether the site is successful in generating the expected visitor count.

If not, you may need to tweak your marketing plan.

The first Web tracker I implemented was Extreme Tracking and it can be found at www.extreme-dm.com. This service was a pioneer in tracking back when it first came out in the late 1990s. It was free back then and it is still free.

Once you sign up, you will need to add some code to the page you are going to track. The service gathers information about the visitor and summarizes the results in reports.

A similar offering is Site Meter at www.sitemeter.com. Like Extreme Tracking, Site Meter provides information such as how many visitors, where they are coming from (based on IP address), what country (based on country code), what browser they are using, etc. As you accumulate this data over time, you can see trends helpful in determining how successful your site is in attracting visitors.

Sample reports from live pages are available from each site. As you will notice, specific information about the user, like name and e-mail address are not captured.

Burt Lum is one click away at www.brouhaha.net.