An HTML counter tracks website visitors with simple code, but is less useful than web host data. Free counters are available online, and experienced designers can write their own.
An HTML counter is an addition to your website that tracks the number of visitors that come to your website. It’s just a few simple lines of code and usually appears as a little ticker somewhere on the page that updates with each new visitor. Typically, an HTML counter doesn’t show any data about visitors, such as which site or search engine referred them to the website. It’s relatively simple to write a counter like this, or the lines of code can be downloaded for free from sites that offer them; typically this just requires a link to the original site.
Fewer website designers choose to use an HTML counter now than they used to. This is because most web hosts are now able to track detailed visitor data; not just the amount of visitors, but the amount of unique hits, where they originated from based on an IP address, and how they got to the website. Web hosts that provide statistics like these may even be able to provide the specific search terms that lead visitors to a site. This is much more useful for most web designers than a simple HTML counter that only displays results and can’t distinguish between unique visits or multiple visits in a day by the same person, or even simple page updates.
However, some web designers still like to display an HTML counter on a website’s main page that will count each visit. It’s usually easiest to look online for free HTML counters; these come in many different designs and are provided free of charge by various websites. The website designer only needs to enter a few prescribed lines of code in the HTML for the website and the HTML counter will then link to the original website and count the visitors.
For those more experienced in web design and HTML writing, it’s also possible to simply write an HTML counter that doesn’t point to another website. Instructions for doing this can also be found online. Both of these types of counters will allow the web designer and visitors to see at a glance how many people have visited the website and can be a quick and easy way to monitor whether certain changes are attracting more visitors to the website or if they need to be made more changes.
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