Snipperoo

Click Tracking

Fred Wilson, who blogs at and as A VC, is totally on the button. He just turned me on to MyBlogLog, which puts this mouseover click data on your site. Try it - roll your mouse over any link. This is exactly the sort of simple, easy to understand bit of script that I love dearly. But he makes one small error: he says 'it's as simple as opening an account and copying some javascript into your blog template'. No Fred, to a lot of people, that's simply beyond the pale. Most people just don't want to mess with their blog template. Lovely widget though.

Fred Wilson's Click Tracking.

One of the many things I have always loved about Brad Feld's blog is the stats on outbound clicks you get when you "mouse over" links on his blog.  I've said many times to myself, "i've got to get that thing".

So yesterday evening, I got that thing.

"That thing" is called My Blog Log and it's as simple as opening an account and copying some javascript into your blog template.

So now you will start to see these little boxes pop-up when you mouse over the links on my blog.

Doesn't get much simpler than this

It's Referrer Madness!

Put this HTML in your site or blog's code someplace:

  <script type="text/javascript" src="http://www.reeferss.com/log"></script>

Now the referrers to your page will be automaticallly logged by Reeferss!

No account needed!

To access those records in the form of a web page or an RSS feed, just use the form:

URL:
  (this is only a filter and need not be an entire url)

You can view the latest referrers across all sites using the universal Web or RSS feed.

Disasters R Us

NetDisaster.com lets you add snippets of code that will put disasters on your page. From meteors to vomiting men, it's a horror show. But fun. Go on - you know you want to.

[Update: I've taken the disaster off the site, only because it put a small graphic up that obscured the top entry title on the page. You can see the effect at this link - http://www.netdisaster.com/go.php?mode=baby&url=http://blog.snipperoo.com/

Statcounter

I've been using StatCounter to track my visitors for years. You can use the free StatCounter service for as many sites as you want - just place a bit of code in a part of your site that is used on every page - header, footer etc.
You can choose whether to add a counter, or have invisible code. I've always used invisible code in the past, but for this project I've put a public counter up - and a link to my stats.

This is the code:

<!-- Start of StatCounter Code -->
<script type="text/javascript" language="javascript">
var sc_project=1351204;
var sc_invisible=0;
var sc_partition=12;
var sc_security="710996a8";
</script>

<script type="text/javascript" language="javascript" src="http://www.statcounter.com/counter/counter.js"></script><noscript><a href="http://www.statcounter.com/" target="_blank"><img  src="http://c13.statcounter.com/counter.php?sc_project=1351204&java=0&security=710996a8&invisible=0" alt="hit counter script" border="0"></a> </noscript>
<!-- End of StatCounter Code --><br><a href="http://my.statcounter.com/project/standard/stats.php?project_id=1351204&guest=1">Hey, check my stats!</a>

And this is it in action (see also the right sidebar). Go easy on me - at the moment no-one reads this blog, not even my mother:

Hey, check my stats!

Real Time Blog Analytics

Real Time Blog Analytics.

In their own words:

All you really want to know is how many people read your blog, how they find you and who keeps coming back for more. But most tools just give you lists of urls, complex graphs that don't make sense, and seven different levels of menus to navigate.

Well not any more, my friend. Blogbeat is here. Smart, elegant, and best of all, designed specifically for blogs so it's easy to understand.

BlogBeat is what I call an invisible snippet: you put the code on your page, but it doesn't show anything to the visitor. Instead, it gives you some functionality. In this case, tracking statistics.

The code in this case is Javascript. This is what it looks like:

<script type="text/javascript" src="http://tracker.blogbeat.net/blogbeat.js"></script>
<script type="text/javascript">
    Blogbeat.initialize('A',439);
</script>

This sort of code snippet has to go in a template, that is, in a part of your page that will appear on every new page.They say put it in the 'footer', but I guess putting it in my left column will work just as well.That's where I put invisible code in my other blogs.

There are many other invisible snippet sites and I'll be covering a few of them over the next few weeks. The big daddy of them all is Google's Analytics - but it's been closed to new users since they made it free and the rush tipped their system over.

BlogBeat is not free, but it's not very expensive if you need to know who is doing what on your site.