Help me spy on my readers

[naomikritzer]

A friend of mine gave me a link to http://www.statcounter.com, which gives you magic code to insert on your web pages that allows you to track how many people are reading and how they found you (if it was via Google) and all that fabulously nosy stuff that I've looked at enviously at other blogs.

Is there some way in LJ to insert the necessary code into my journal?

Comments

[thefaeway.livejournal.com]

Likely not into your posts automatically, but - and I haven't actually looked at that specifically, just from a general statcounter perspective - you can insert the code into your userinfo, so to track people looking at your info.

From the statcounter user forums:

[dtm]

In response to a "how do I make this work with livejournal" question:

First of all LiveJournal does not allow javascript to be used so all you can use is the html-only version of Statcounter.

If there is no way to customize the wrapper or template or footer section of your LiveJournal space, then you have to put the code inside a post, the way you would use to insert html code there (therefore not in a WYSIWYG editor). When the page where the post with the Statcounter code on it is loaded by a visitor, the Statcounter code logs that.

You will not see any url information (page visited, referrer) since only javascript can trap that, not the html-only version of the counter.

If you put the code in more than one post which are shown on the same page, you will get multiple hits, so it's not advisable.

The practical upshot of this is that you can't get the fabulously nosy stuff you want, since livejournal doesn't allow you to insert javascript (for, I might add, damn good reasons) into your posts. What else they give you - number of visitors, etc. - can easily be gotten other ways if you have an external web host that gives you raw log access and simply include a tiny image in your posts. (say, replace the final period by an image of a period, or better yet a 1x1 transparent gif)

Actually, when I've included images in my livejournal, I've gotten slightly better than what it appears statcounter is offerring - namely, although I don't see how people got to the livejournal page with my entry on it (so don't see google searches that lead to livejournal, etc.), I do see which livejournal page they found my entry on (i.e. which friends page or friends-of-friends page). I also see their IP addresses, which statcounter might also give you, which lets you sort-of guess at where they are.

Huh. You know, statcounter's service seems like the kind of thing it'd be really easy to duplicate, without much programming effort at all. Of course, many web services are like that, and so there's undoubtedly stuff they do that I'm not considering, (such as the fact that their model seems to require taking advertising dollars from people I consider web scum) but it really doesn't seem like anything that'd be at all difficult to duplicate.

One of my favorite things about you...

[mrswebchik.livejournal.com]

Heehee...

Why am I not surprised that you responded to this? So, have you come up with an alternate solution?

(she says, remembering the time she asked a simple question about the SF Library search engine one day, and had a modified version for herself to use for similar purposes the next day)

-Zanne

[(Anonymous)]

Naomi, it's Heels. I use www.sitemeter.com

I like it a lot. I have no idea how to get it onto your site, tho.

[naomikritzer]

Oh, I just want to know how many non-LJers read my blog. I'm not fretting about who could be reading it. If it's not friendslocked (and I post very little that's friends-only) then I assume everyone from my in-laws to my ex-boyfriends to potential future employers are reading it.