I like to know what's going on with my blogs. In fact, whenever I do something new on a blog, I get all obsessive about whether anyone is reading it. That's one of the reasons I like today's site, www.statcounter.com. It's incredibly easy to put the code for the statcounter into my blog, and the site creates a log file that lets me look at all kinds of stats about my traffic.
If you are just interested in quantity, there is a summary page that shows how many unique visitors and return visitors your blog has had. There is also a fabulously useful analysis of search engine keywords, to show what words people were searching on when they clicked through to your blog. A little more obscure - but fascinating - is the ability to "drill down" into individual site visits, to see where each visitor came from. Not only can you get a general idea of the visitor geography (although be aware that this is inexact - AOL users all show up as living in Virginia, for example), but you can also find out what browser they used, the search engine they used, and even the IP address of the computer used to read your blog. Cool stuff.
The basic (free) Statcounter.com account only handles a log of 100 visits, but for a lower traffic blog, this is fine. By the time your blog exceeds this, you should be plenty willing to fork over the monthly fee for a larger log file. At any rate, if you have a blog and care about who is reading it and why, this site is a gem.
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