I came across the Irish StatCounter, a free "Web tracker, Hit counter and Web stats" service. I am now using it to keep an eye on traffic to this site. I am very impressed with the basic (i.e. free) service. It is flexible, very easy to set up, and much more powerful than others I have investigated. The StatCounter web site has excellent user-documentation and help. The help is written with great care, and the user-documentation has useful insights on interpretation. You can review the range of reports provided from the StatCounter demo.
13/5/2007 update. StatCounter currently has over 1.3 million members and tracks 9 billion page-loads per month across its network of 2 million websites. StatCounter was founded by Aodhan Cullen when he was 16. In May 2007 Aodhan won the Irish "Young ICT Person of the Year Award".
I started using Statcounter about 3 years ago and have found it very easy to set up and use. I wanted a simple, invisible (and FREE) counter from which I could get basic reports when required. It doesn't force unwanted advertising, which some counters do, and provides the facilities that I need for a restricted access website.
Posted by: Joe Clarke | 24/04/2006 at 11:19