Custom Tags

Custom Tags is a new way to measure traffic with StatCounter.

It lets you tag pageviews on your website with whatever data you wish, allowing you to filter and segment your traffic in StatCounter reports in completely customised ways. This can lead to measurement and insights not previously possible with StatCounter.

For example, if you manage a blog, here’s some examples of questions you can now answer using Custom Tags:

  • Which authors generate the most traffic?
  • Which blog topics attract the most traffic?
  • Which types of headline attract the most readers?
  • Are long blogs more popular than blogs with lots of images and less text?

Answering these questions could help you optimise your content to attract more traffic.

An ecommerce website might want to know:

  • Which categories of product attract most attention?
  • What was the navigation flow of a user with a specific username or account ID?

(See Custom Tags Use Cases in the Knowledgebase for suggestions on how to use Custom Tags to answer these questions)

A pageview can be tagged with any data using one line of JavaScript code on your page.

For example in blog posts that feature a lot of images you could tag them like this:


_statcounter.push({“tags”: {“blog_format”: “image-heavy”}});


Or in blog posts with less images and more text you could use the following tag:


_statcounter.push({“tags”: {“blog_format”: “text-heavy”}});


(See How do I use Custom Tags in the Knowledgebase for important implementation details)

Once this data is recorded you can see how your tag values compare in the Custom Tags report:

custom_tags_blog_format_2

With the example code above you would be able to see which type of blog format attracts more traffic, and use that insight to help optimise blog posts in the future. You can also click on a tag value in this report to to see which of your urls perform best for that tag.

You can also filter many of our existing reports for these tag values.

Remember, the above are just sample ideas – you can tag your pageviews with any data that is useful to you.

We will be developing this feature further and adding new features to help you measure more with StatCounter. We’d love to hear your feedback on what you want to measure and how we can help make this happen with StatCounter.

Have fun and let us know what you think!

See Also:

How do I use Custom Tags?
Custom Tags Use Cases

Posted in Features, News | 2 Comments

How to use filters to view stats by location

Filters is a powerful tool that we launched 2 years ago. It allows you to filter any of the StatCounter stats to answer many different questions about your visitors.

A common request we get into support, is how to filter the stats by location i.e. how do I only view view visitors from the US? Rory from the StatCounter team made this video to show how easy it is to do. Please set the video to full screen and highest video quality for best viewing!

Posted in How-to | 9 Comments

StatCounter Apps for iOS and Android

We’re pleased to announce the launch of StatCounter apps for iOS and Android.* These apps are free to download and use. Get your app now from iTunes or Google Play.

Enter your username and password** in the app and view an array of familiar StatCounter reports.

  • Compare your traffic trends for this week versus last week
  • Examine recent visitors
  • View your most popular pages
  • Check where your traffic came from
  • Plus much more

iphoneiphone2

We hope you enjoy using the new app. In-app ads can be removed at any point simply by upgrading your StatCounter account. Please send your feedback, feature requests and suggestions via the feedback form within the app or via this form.

* The app has been developed to work with iOS 6.1 and later and Android 2.3 and later. For mobile users without a supported Android or iOS device you can still continue to use the mobile site at m.statcounter.com.

**Log in with the username and password you use for your main StatCounter account.

Posted in News | 77 Comments

Google Keyword Problem

Have you noticed “Keywords Unavailable” in your StatCounter reports?

Unfortunately, this is due to a decision by Google to withhold this keyword information.

Since 2011 Google has been steadily expanding its policy of withholding keyword data for organic search. This means that website owners and professionals have limited access to the keywords used to find their sites. While we at StatCounter can’t undo what Google has done, we have added a new feature to our service to maximize and streamline access to available keyword data.

We have integrated Google Webmaster Tools (GWT) keyword data into our reporting. This means that you, our members, can have efficient, streamlined access to all available keyword data.

You can read more about it in our press release here.

How to link your StatCounter account with GWT

To integrate your GWT data into your StatCounter account, here is what you need to do:

  • Log in to your StatCounter account
  • Click the “Wrench Icon” beside your project name.
  • gwt-wrench3

  • Click “Import GWT Data”.
  • import-gwt

  • Finally, follow the steps outlined on the page to link StatCounter with your GWT account.
  • import-gwt-page2


New Keyword Analysis Options

After you have completed the steps above, the Keyword Analysis Stat will now have 4 new options as outlined below:

gwt6

1. StatCounter Only

This is the usual Keyword Analysis stat.

gwt2

2. Google Webmaster

This shows the GWT keyword data only. Note that the stats are presented in the familar StatCounter style.

3. Comparison

This shows the GWT keyword data alongside the StatCounter data. You can look at each keyword and compare direct StatCounter data with indirect data collected from GWT.

4. Merged

The ‘Merged’ option includes the standard StatCounter data but redistributes the Google portion of the ‘Keywords Unavailable’ data according to the spread of keywords in the Google Webmaster Tools dataset.

gwt3

Email reports will automatically include this merged data.


New Stat: GWT Data

Finally there is an entirely new stat called GWT Data which is based solely on the GWT keyword data. It shows you the clicks, impressions and positions of your keywords.

gwt4

You can click the drill down link beside each result to see how individual keywords have performed over time. See a sample graph below.

gwt5


We hope this new addition to your stats is useful. Please share your thoughts, comments, questions and suggestions below.

Posted in News | 196 Comments

StatCounter API

StatCounter API

We’re proud to publicly launch the StatCounter API today. The API is available to all members with a paid upgrade. It gives developers direct access to StatCounter data allowing them to build scripts, custom reports, widgets and apps.

Many thanks to our early adopters, who have performed extensive testing on the API and given valuable suggestions and feedback.

To get started, head on over to the documentation. You will need to set your API password. Then you can start constructing your API calls in your preferred programming language.

We’re keen to improve the API and expand its functionality so please send any bug reports or feature requests for the API to us here http://api.statcounter.com/feedback .

Please note that the StatCounter API is only available to StatCounter members with a paid upgrade. Unfortunately while we make every effort to provide as many features and as much functionality as possible with our free StatCounter accounts, we are not currently in a position to offer the StatCounter API on a free basis.

Posted in News | 106 Comments