How do I create and install the PrecisionCounter hit
counter and statistical tracking code?
It's very simple! Just create your
account, copy the HTML/Javascript code provided after you've selected
your counter style, and copy that code into your own web pages -- and
that's it! To view your visitor statistics, simply return to this site,
and login to Your Account.
IMPORTANT: Double-check your e-mail address before creating an
account, and be sure to add the e-mail address "admin@precisioncounter.com"
to any filtering or "challenge/response" service you use on your incoming
e-mail.
Why are your hit counters and web site statistics free?
We include a single, text-only advertising link in your counter code which appears
just below the counter images on your pages. This link allows us to
provide our comprehensive traffic and statistical reporting service for
free, and you must include the link along with the other code provided
below. Note: We ONLY advertise for standard businesses and referral companies,
so you will NOT see any adult or gambling-related links on your pages!
Click here to review the details of these terms.
I don't mind displaying your text link in exchange for
free a hit counter and comprehensive site statistics, but what if I don't
like the particular text link provided with my counter code?
The text link is a required element of this service.
But you can always choose another advertising link from our systems by
simply logging in to your PrecisionCounter account and using the "counter
code" option. Everytime you refresh that page, our systems will display
your counter code and the preview sample which includes one of our other
advertiser/sponsor links randomly selected every time you refresh the
page. Once you see a link you wouldn't mind having on your site, simply
copy the code and use or replace it on your web pages.
We are able to record hits and page-views from all standard,
unsecured web pages where you've installed our JavaScript counter code and
those pages viewed by visitors who have JavaScript enabled in their web
browsers.
There may be some small difference between our recorded hits and/or
page-views and the actual number of visitors you receive for several
possible reasons, including improper installation of our code, or some
number of your site visitors having disabled javascript in their browsers,
or perhaps even some interruption on the servers where either your site or
ours resides.
There are many factors that can impact the external, script-based
collection of statistical data like this. The most accurate statistical
reporting would be derived from analysis of your own server log files, but
that tends to involve software, maintenance and configuration costs which
are definitely not FREE. The type of script/client-side service that we
offer is best suited to providing an overall and fairly accurate view of
your daily traffic, visitor demographics, search engine and other referral
sources.
We respect your privacy! We do NOT share or in any way
distribute any personal, business or contact information you may provide
when creating an account here. We simply provide you a hit-counter and
statistical reporting service in exchange for the included small text link which
we use to advertise our affiliated sponsors -- and that's it! Click
here for more information.
Yes! But please note, you may have trouble logging out of
one account and into another, because of the cookies used to establish a
connection between you and your account. If you encounter this issue,
simply use the "logoff" button from within your account, close ALL
browsers and then login again with your other account username/password.
We offer this service "as-is", with no warranties or
guarantees of service or accuracy. There are simply too many external
factors that can impact the collection of statistical data and/or the
sending of account registration, password reminder and weekly reporting
e-mails by systems such
as these. Click here for more information.
Your hit counter and site statistics services are
FANTASTIC!
Where can I send my glowing praise and comments? :)
Please feel free to e-mail us any comments at ! Also, if you like
our service and wish to let others know about us, we have posted links to our site on several
sites which provide great script-search services and utilities for webmasters. Please use the links below,
search for "PrecisionCounter.com", rate our service and/or submit your own comments for the benefit of other people looking for free hit counters and
site statistics!
Why can't I login, or why do I get an
'Invalid ID' error?
If you have a brand new account, then you may have simply
entered your username/password incorrectly. Try logging in again, or just
use our Lost Password feature to get a new one
sent to you immediately!
Alternately, because our site uses cookies and sessions to "remember" you
(your web browser), you either need to (1.) be sure that your browser
and/or desktop software allows our site to send cookies to your web
browser and that you also have JavaScript enabled. Or, (2.) there is
simply a chance that the site may get confused if you have recently
changed your password and/or you are trying to access multiple accounts
here (because the new/different logins specified in your cookies are
conflicting with the current session).
To resolve this issue, you simply need to click the "Log-Out" button (if
you're already logged in), close all open web browser windows, open your
browser again, return to the site and login again. Closing your web
browsers will clear any open sessions/connections you may have to the
site. If that doesn't solve the problem, then you'll need to clrea your
browser cache (in Internet Explorer, select "Internet Options" from the
browser's "Tools" menu, and click the "Delete Files" button under the
"Temporary Internet files" section.
Also, for older accounts which we detect have not been
used or recorded any hits for at least 30 days, your account may have also
been removed from our systems as part of our normal monthly maintenance
and clean-up routines. If this is the case, you'll just need to create a new
account for yourself.
Lastly, your login is CaSe-SEnsAtIvE, so double-check that as well.
Can I remove, move, change or replace the advertising link
including with your counters?
No, Yes, No and Yes. You cannot remove or change the
advertising link we provide with our counters, but you can move or swap
the link with another from our systems.
If you wish to move the advertising link to another part of your web page,
where it will better fit with your design, you may do so.
To swap advertising links, simply login to your PrecisionCounter account,
and use the "counter code" option. This will simply re-produce
your counter code, and randomly select another advertiser/sponsor link
from our database at the same time.
Why didn't I receive my weekly e-mail summary report?
Either (1.) you didn't set this option in Your Account,
(2.) you entered your e-mail address incorrectly when creating your new
account, (3.) your own e-mail filtering systems have blocked your reciept of
these messages, or (4.) we experienced some sort of temporary technical
problem on our end.
How do I UNSUBSCRIBE from the weekly
e-mail summary reports?
You can change this mailing option at any time by simply
logging into your account and un-checking the
"Weekly Stats by E-Mail" option at the bottom. We're very concerned about
spam and we absolutely respect your privacy. Because we don't have any
support staff however, and since you opted to receive these messages in
the first place, you are responsibile for changing your own account
settings here if you no longer wish to receive these weekly statistics
reports.
IMPORTANT NOTE FOR AOL USERS: AOL's
"Advanced Spam Filter" is causing serious problems for businesses and
services all over the internet, and is doing very little to reduce the
avalanche of unsolicited email which is causing problems for all of us.
This is due simply to the increased possibility (as of their "Version 9.0"
e-mail interface) that legitimate, opted-in and fully-compliant mailings
such as ours could still be automatically flagged as spam - for no other
reason than an AOL recipient might forget to move our mailings from their
"Bulk" folder to their "Inbox", or selects to block our mailing instead of
unsubscribing. Please be sure to add our "From" addresses
("stats-reports@precisioncounter.com" and "admin@precisioncounter.com") to
your allowed "People I Know" list or exclude these address from your
Blocked mail addressee list.
Also, there are consequences to us in terms of administrative overhead, if
any AOL users intentionally choose to Block our opted-in mailings from
inside AOL's interface rather than unsubscribe themselves directly from
their own PrecisionCounter account. The AOL "Block" feature is NOT an
unsubscribe mechanism, but instead causes automated spam complaints to be
sent to our hosting company, who in turn has to check with us every single
time just to be sure some OUTSIDE spammer has not hijacked our "From"
address (since they already know we only send opted-in messages).
You can have a new password automatically generated and
e-mailed to you at any time. Just use the "Lost Password" link on the
login page or click here!
You'll need to enter your account username and the e-mail address you used
to create the account, and a new password will be sent to you immediately.
Please note: All passwords in our systems are fully encrypted before being
saved, which is why you can't actually view your existing password. For
your security and ours, it's just not possible for anyone - including us
- to see or retrieve any existing passwords from this system. If you
forget your existing password, just have a new one sent to you by our
systems. Once you login again, you're free to update the password as
needed from Your Account.
Can I change my account settings, password and counter
styles again?
You can always change any aspect of your account and counter
settings at any time! Just login to Your Account,
and all the options can edited right there!
What if I need to delete my counter and cancel my
account?
Simply remove our counter code from your pages, and don't
login to your account here. Our systems are configured to automatically
remove any accounts which have not been used for 30 days. Basically, if we
have not recorded any hits from your counter in the past 30 days, our
systems assume you either removed or never installed our counter code on
your web pages, and your account is removed during each monthly
clean-up/maintenance cycle.
Can you create a custom counter image for me or my
company?
Yes. Our web design firm affiliate, idowebs.biz can provide you with
custom counter images for a standard design fee of $250.
You may contact them through their web site at http://www.idowebs.bizand simply
request a custom counter image for your PrecisionCounter.com account. Just
provide your account PrecisionCounter.com account ID number, attach any
logo or image you wish to use as a background for your counter, and
specify whether the counter is numbered or "stealth". Please note that
idowebs.biz has no control over the font-face/size used on our numbered
counters and can only provide you a background image or alternate
"stealth" graphic upon request.
How much statistical data do you collect, and how long is
it stored in your systems?
To ensure our systems are not overloaded or abused,
individual session and statistical records are removed after 31 days, but the overall total "hits" are always available.
Do you offer any other technical support by e-mail or
phone?
No. We offer a very popular, easy-to-use and free service
which requires only a minimal technical knowledge and the ability to read
the instructions, FAQs and online support provided through this web site.
The last thing we want is to be stuck on the phone for several hours each
day, having to teach people who can barely open their web browsers about
basic HTML, FTP or statistical concepts. Of course, if we ever decided to
adopt the Microsoft "pay for support" model, then we'd be glad to train
any newbies about this stuff... But since that won't happen any time soon,
sorry... You should just get one of your kids to explain it to you
(they're all so smart about computers these days) :)
Is there any limit on the amount of hits or statistical
data I can collect through your service?
Yes, but only for the very highly trafficked sites. We
measure our account-usage in terms of bandwidth and database storage. If
your account(s) collects more than 20 Megabytes of statistical data per
month (roughly equivalent to 150,000 visitor sessions), we'll ask you to
upgrade to our paid, premium account which costs $100/month for up to 500
Megabytes of database storage. $175 per month gets you up to a Gigabyte of
storage.
Beyond that, you really should invest in your own dedicated server and
stats software, as it's just not economical to keep paying us for more
database storage, when you could rent your own machine for less per
month. Feel free to contact our web hosting affiliate, www.idowebhosting.netfor a
quote on dedicated servers and/or statistical software that is included
with most of their hosting plans - including Webalizer, AWStats and the
industry-leading Urchin Reporting.
In any case, we reserve the right to remove any accounts which are using
too much of our bandwidth. We all know it costs money for web hosting and
database storage, and we'll close any account which we even suspect as
taking advantage of our free service.
Can I add these counters to more than one page on my
site?
Yes! Feel free to include our counter code on all of your
pages. All of your visitors' page-views will be recorded, and each
individual visitor within a 24 hour period will be counted as 1 unique
visitor.
I'm seeing your code on my web pages instead of the
actual counter image. How do I add your code to my pages using visual HTML page/site editors
like FrontPage, GoLive or DreamWeaver?
The most common problem occurs when the code we provide is
pasted into the "Normal" or visual view/window of your editor. This will
usually cause the code to be displayed on the page itself rather than as a
hidden element which displays your counter images. To avoid this problem,
you must switch to your "HTML" or "Source Code" view, and paste the
HTML/Javascript code we've provided directly into the HTML code on your
page. Most people just paste our code just above the last "</body>" tag at
the very end/bottom of the HTML document they're editing.
Why doesn't the counter number increase when I Reload my
page or view it more than once a day?
Our hit-counters are configured to record just one "hit"
(but unlimited page-views) for any individual visitor in any 24 hour
period. We use cookies to track visitors and hits, and these cookies are
set to expire after 24 hours. This means that if someone visits your site
10 times in 24 hours, PrecisionCounter.com will count 1 unique visitor and
10 hits. This method of tracking is more accurate and useful than simple
"per browser sessions".
How do you use cookies, and is your script P3P compliant?
The PrecisionCounter counter and statistical scripts require cookies in order
to identify visitors. As such, we have also included a P3P compact policy statement in our
scripts. IE6+ requires P3P compact statements to be present when
third-party cookies are set, so without support for this protocol, the
counter would not work effectively. We have set cookies to expire after 24
hours. This means that if a visitor visits a site with a PrecisionCounter
counter on it 10 times within 24 hours, the script will count 1 unique
visitor and 10 hits. We believe that this method of tracking is more
useful than "per browser session".
Under my Referrers stats, what's the difference between "Bookmark, Shortcut or E-Mail Link", "Blocked" or "Hidden" referrers?
If NO referrer can be detected, our system log the visit under "Bookmark, Shortcut or E-Mail Link".
Technical note: The referrer is obtained from a standard javascript function (document.referrer), and appended to the "&r=" variable string sent to our systems by the counter image.
With regard to "Blocked" or "Hidden" referrers, some people use anti-virus and/or firewall software which may be configured to either prevent (block) a site from obtaining any referring data from their browser and/or which masks (hides) the referring data.
Sample Statistics
