I’ve been trying to find out if using too many stat counters can hurt the performance of a website. Logic would seem to say yes, but then again, logic doesn’t always apply in the world of websites. I was wondering if anyone here has ever seen research on the use of stat counters.
And to define what I mean by stat counters, on some of my blogs I have them registered through StatCounter, Google Analytics and I also use the Statpress Reloaded Wordpress plugin. There are times when I check each one, but I wonder if using all three is overkill and hurts my site.
Problem is each one makes a request back to their site, that’s 3 out bound connections to other servers just for your stats. Google of course is normally not a problem but the others might really slow your site down. For example if one of their services/sites are down you’ll have requests to them timing out. Minimize the amount of outbound connections you have. I would remove all except Google unless there is some major benefit from using them. To they send any traffic? Do you really use the stats?
Another thing to keep in mind with these counters is they almost always use Javascript to include/run their code in your pages. Each Javascript you add to your site adds more load time to your site because the browser has to stop everything it is doing, process the Javascript and then start back rendering the page. Mix that in with the extra out bound connections to other servers Bjorn mentioned and your page can quickly become really slow. I would really only use one stats system like Google Analytics. With Google Analytics, or some like it, you pretty much have all the tracking data that any of us really need.
Good advice, but I’ve always been leary of listing all my sites with Google Analytics. I’ve been paranoid that they might catch on to my A-B-C linking strategy since I have sites at multiple hosts.
As long as you aren’t doing/creating exact mirror sites, GA won’t ding you for it.
Example: I have 3 sites all on the same server. Almost identical to the naked eye. All registered and using GA. Same pages, with the exception of tweeking of the actual page (i.e. www.abc.com/bareback.htm, www.def.com/bareback-sex.htm, www.ghi.com/gay-bareback-sex.htm). Tweek the meta tags slightly. The results for me is that I am guaranteed one of my sites (if not 2) are generally listed in the top 10 on the search engines, in particular Google. I’ve even seen all 3 in some cases! So I wouldn’t be concerned about GA as long as you’re doing some tweeking and not just mirroring.
javascript slows your server and if you use more than one counter, you’ll put a lot of pressure on the server and you’ll have a domino effect: slow speed=slow pageload=decrease alexa ranging=fewer google links=bad for traffic
