Counters ... Outster

I posted this over in the traffic forum, but nobody seems to read anything but here, so I'm sorry for the cross post but ...

Hi all,

I'm just hoping that someone can give me a brief overview of services like Outster.

I can't really tell from their website what it's all about.

I'm assuming that it's a counter and it'll track the number of visitors to your site. No biggie, you can get that from your logs, right?

So, I'm also assuming that when you put their counter on your site, they include your site in one of their listings and hopefully you'll get some traffic.

Am I on the mark? Is this worth doing? Do people actually get good traffic?

What are the pitfalls or downsides of adding these things to your site?

Thanks
dzinerbear

Michael,

Several years ago i used to swear by Outster for the traffic you got back from them however, in recent years the traffic doesnt seem to be as potent as it once was so in reality all the counter is good for is getting stats.

That being said, if all you are using the counter for is the stats reports dont use them, your host can probably setup a better stats report on your server for you anyway ;)

Regards,

Lee

ah. I was gonna respond in there but since it's here I'll go ahead and respond to this one hehe.

Yeah, it's a counter that tracks movement in to and through your site (on pages the counter is placed). Tracks referrers (including search engines) and keyphrases and hits and all that jazz.

You can get some traffic from Outster's link list but how much you get depends on how high you rank on their traffic stats - which is to say if you're already getting lots of traffic and high on their list, then you'll get more visits from Outster because your listing will be more prominent.

If you're ranked low on their list because your traffic is already somewhat low, you'll not get a whole helluva lot of traffic.

Personally, I only use them on one site but am gradually phasing them out. Their referral stats do me little good because I took them off my main index page (my index page is what has the TOS and Age/Consent to Enter link and Outster's counter graphic is a hardcore image of a guy suckin' a cock. So I didn't want to put that graphic on to my index page and I emailed them asking for a non-XXX counter graphic. It took them 4 months to get back to me on that e-mail and their answer was I'd have to list the site as a non-adult site in order to get a non-XXX graphic. Seemed a stupid idea to me so I said fuck it).

Also, on occasion because it's someone else's bit of code sitting on your site, if they have issues/problems at their end it can affect how your site loads. I've noticed sometimes my pages would freeze up during loading because the Outster counter bit had frozen up on loading. Blech.

I'm just not a tremendous fan of counters as it's giving someone else a little bit too much access to your site, far as I'm concerned. Their code. Their executable javascript. Their image. Me no likey.

But I kept them up for a little while - on JuicyGoo - because other webmasters were noticing the traffic I was getting on Outster and it made for positive attention, got me a bit of traffic from Outster for awhile, and had some utility at the outset. At this point, though, I feel my site's at a point where I can get rid of all the Outster counters and forget about em and I'm in the process of doing that. I have my own stats programs so don't need Outster's.

Speaking of gnarly counter stories, I had a couple pages with Porngraph's counter on them. Then porngraph was sold to someone else. And those people put some fucked up browser hijacking/spyware/homepage resetting/traffic redirecting bullshit in to their counter's javascript code. So any and everyone using Porngraph essentially had their site and traffic stolen out from under their feet for awhile before they removed all the Porngraph code on all their pages. Thankfully I caught it immediately and had them off my site in a flash before I got hit any.

That's the kind of worst case scenario some stranger's javascript on your site could result in. It happens. =\

Thanks guys, I appreciate this. Lots of good information.

Cheers
Dzinerbear