Every free counter here works the same way. You sign up, they give you a line of HTML, and you paste it into your page. The line is an IMG tag that points at their computer instead of yours, with your account number on the end. Each time somebody loads your page, their computer adds one and sends back a picture of the new number. It's clever, and it means your counter is only as good as their computer. Times are from home, over a 56K modem that usually connects around 44.

The Invisible Eye   A-
Down 3 times in 424 · usually under 2 seconds · no ads on your page

This one doesn't show a number at all. It puts a see-through picture one pixel square on your page, and you log in on their site to see your statistics: visitors by the day and the hour, which browsers they used, their screen sizes, and best of all, which page they clicked from to get to you. That last part is how I found out a quilting page in Ohio had been sending me forty people a week. If you want the stats and don't want the world to see you've had 212 visitors, this is the one. The only ads are on their statistics pages, which only you see. It loses a half grade because the stats pages crawl on weeknights around nine.

Tally-Ho Counters   B+
Down 5 times in 424 · usually under 2 seconds · one small text link

The best-looking of the bunch: twelve styles of digits, from odometer to LED to a set of little wooden blocks. Setup took me four minutes. Under the counter goes a tiny line of text that links back to them, which I think is a fair trade. You can start your counter at any number you type in, which is fine, but see my note on the front page. My one real complaint: the counter goes up every time you load your own page, too, and there's no way to tell it to skip you. Get in the habit of looking at your page with the counter covered by your thumb.

GeoCities.us Page Builder counter   B
Down 0 times in 424 · as fast as your page · no ads

One click in Page Builder and it's on your page, in the plain odometer digits from the clip art library. It never once failed to show up, and that makes sense: it lives on the same computer as your page, so if the counter is down, so is everything else. It's the one on my front page. What you don't get is any statistics at all, just the number. For most people that's all they wanted.

NumberNine   B-
Down 19 times in 424 · 2 to 40 seconds · one small button

NumberNine shows a counter and keeps statistics, almost as many as the Invisible Eye. When it's up, it's great. But nineteen misses is too many, and nearly all of them were at night, when the most people are home and on line. More than once the counter took forty seconds to arrive, and because it was near the top of my test page, everything below it sat there waiting. If you use it, put it at the very bottom. Their little 88x31 button goes on your page next to the counter.

Hitsville   D
Down 11 times in 424 · about 3 seconds · a pop-up window

The counter itself is fine. The problem is that about one visit in ten, Hitsville opens a second browser window on top of your page with an advertisement in it. Your visitor didn't ask for it, doesn't know where it came from, and blames you. I found out when my mother called to ask why my page was trying to sell her a credit card. It was gone from my test page the same night, and I only put it back to finish the count.

BeanCounter   F
Up fine through April · gone in May

For three months BeanCounter was my favorite: quick, plain, no ads at all. Then one morning in May, every BeanCounter counter on the Web turned into a broken picture, the little square with the red X, and it stayed that way. No notice, no forwarding address, no way to get your number back. A woman who writes to me had been counting since 1996. She had to guess. I don't blame anybody for running out of money, but this is exactly why I tell everyone to write the number down every Sunday.

The bottom line: if you just want a number, use the Page Builder counter. If you want to know who's coming and from where, use the Invisible Eye and don't show a number at all. Either way, write it down on Sundays.

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Jerry Dietz · [email protected]
Last updated Sunday, September 19, 1999