How Counter.gratis Measures Website Traffic
Counter.gratis provides simple website traffic statistics without requiring a complex analytics setup. This page explains how the main statistics are measured and how the numbers should be interpreted.
Visitors
A visitor is identified by the IP address from which the counter is requested. The same IP address is counted only once for the same website within a UTC calendar day.
The visitor count therefore represents daily unique IP addresses rather than an exact count of individual people. Several people can share one IP address, while one person may use several IP addresses.
Pageviews
A pageview is recorded when a page containing the full Counter.gratis tracking code is loaded. Repeated page loads by the same visitor can therefore increase the pageview count without increasing the number of visitors.
For consistency, the displayed number of pageviews for a day is never lower than the number of visitors recorded for that day.
How additional visitor information is determined
- Country: estimated from the visitor's IP address using an external IP geolocation service.
- Language: based on the preferred language reported by the visitor's browser. It is a browser setting and does not necessarily indicate nationality or location.
- Browser, operating system and device type: derived from user-agent information reported by the browser.
- Screen resolution: based on the screen dimensions reported by the browser when available.
- Visited page: determined from the URL of the page on which the counter is loaded.
- Referrer: based on the referring page reported by the browser, when available.
Bots and automated traffic
Counter.gratis identifies many known bots, crawlers and automated tools using their user-agent information. Recognised bots are shown separately and are excluded from the human operating-system and device distributions.
Bot detection cannot be complete. Automated traffic may imitate an ordinary browser or hide its identity. Such requests can therefore still be included in visitor and pageview statistics.
How to interpret the statistics
No website counter can determine with certainty whether every request represents a separate human visitor. The statistics should therefore be understood as technical measurements rather than exact counts of people.
Several indicators viewed together are often more informative than visitor numbers alone. Pageviews per visitor, countries, languages, referrers, devices and recurring traffic patterns can help identify engaged, unusual or automated traffic.
Important: A visitor is a technical counting unit, not necessarily one individual person. Country, language and device information are technical estimates and should not be interpreted as verified personal information.
Accuracy and limitations
- Shared networks, NAT and mobile networks may cause several people to appear as one visitor.
- Changing IP addresses can cause one person to appear as several visitors.
- VPNs, proxies and network infrastructure can make the estimated country differ from the visitor's actual location.
- Browser language, user-agent and screen information may be missing, modified or inaccurate.
- Browsers and websites may suppress referrer information. An empty referrer therefore does not necessarily mean a direct visit.
- Not all automated traffic can be recognised as a bot or crawler.
In summary
Counter.gratis distinguishes visitors by IP address per UTC calendar day and counts pageviews separately. Countries are estimated from IP geolocation, while language, device information, screen resolution, visited pages and referrers are derived from browser and request data. These statistics are useful for understanding traffic levels and patterns, but they are estimates rather than exact measurements of individual people.
