Hi folks,

Here is a summary of some of the latest news from StatCounter.

Ads – New Networks

Advertising revenue allows us to fund our free service. Increasing our ad revenue allows us to invest in improving the service we offer. With this in mind, we have been running some new ad networks on StatCounter lately.

Further to last month’s blog post, we’d like to take this opportunity to remind you that we strive to ensure that only high quality advertising is shown on our site. However, as different adverts are shown on StatCounter in different parts of the world, here in StatCounter HQ we don’t actually see every advert shown to our members.

We are committed to providing the best service we can to our members so, if you see an inappropriate/intrusive/offensive advert, PLEASE let us know about it. With your help, we can ensure a better experience for all our members. We require the following information to identify and remove any nuisance ads:

• Ad position - top or side
• URL where ad is being seen
• Geo location where ad was seen
• Click url of ad

If possible please also take a screenshot of the ad. Although our support system does not allow attachments for security reasons, we will contact you directly to retrieve the image from you.

SC4 Update
We know, we know… SC4 has been a long time coming but it IS coming!

When we began the beta phase of SC4, we asked for volunteers to test the service. When testing proved successful and various bugs were ironed out, we were faced with a dilemma… we had our new platform available and we had two options:

1. We could keep the new system under wraps until we were ready to convert all the existing StatCounter projects to SC4 OR
2. We could set all NEW projects created to SC4 immediately thus allowing new and existing members to benefit from the new features while we continued to work on the conversion

We chose to implement option 2 above. Although this means that we have been running two platforms side by side for over a year now, we do believe that this was the correct course of action to take as it allowed as many people as possible to gain the benefits of the new system.

Significant investments have been made in server technology and in strengthening our team and we are working flat out to make this new platform available to everyone.

Rather than risk problems or outages we have just had to take our time on this. Conversion to our new platform has taken much longer than we anticipated and for this we offer you our sincere apologies. We cannot wait to convert all projects to SC4 and we are so grateful to you for your patience as we continue work to achieve this.

PR Award

Earlier this year we launched StatCounter Global Stats – this free service provides market share stats for browsers, operating systems and search engines (including mobile). Within 2 weeks of launch, we were thrilled to achieve over 100,000 hits from over 100 countries.

Instrumental to the launch were the advice and assistance of our PR agent, Simpson FT PR. For this reason, we were delighted to hear that Ronnie Simpson and his team won the 2009 New Media PR Excellence Award for their work on the campaign. Well done all!

Folks,

As different adverts are shown on StatCounter in different parts of the world, here in StatCounter HQ, we don’t actually get to see every single advert shown to our members… and although we try hard to screen all ads BEFORE they are are shown on StatCounter, some nasty ads do slip through the net

In the last 24 hours we have heard reports that some nasty auto-expanding ads have been shown on StatCounter. We do apologise for this. We are investigating this with a view to removing all offending adverts ASAP and thanks are due to StatCounter members Gordon and Tony for their quick action in alerting us to this issue.

While we rely on our advertising revenue to fund our free service, we only want the nicest, best behaved ads on our site. Thanks for your patience as we work to fix this issue.

UPDATE:
We believe we have traced and removed the source of the offending ads. Please post here if you continue to see any nasty ads and give us the following information:

• Ad position - top or side
• url where ad is being seen
• screenshot of ad
• geo location where ad was seen
• Click url of ad

Please also take a screenshot of the ad and we will contact you directly to retrieve the image from you. Many thanks!

Hi folks,

Did you know that you can set up different users in your StatCounter account?

In fact, if you want to allow other people to access your StatCounter account, we strongly recommend that you do this.

Using our User Access Management feature you can also set up different levels of access for each user.

How do I add a user to my StatCounter account?

• Log in to your StatCounter account and click “Users” in the top navigation bar.

• Click “Add New User”.
• Complete the “Account Details” and “Personal Details”.
• In the “User Access Rights” section, assign the chosen user type.
• In the “Project Access” section, select which projects you want your new user to access.

• At the end of the page, click “Add New User” and you’re done!

What are the different User Types?

• Admin (full access to ALL projects)
  This gives the user FULL access to ALL projects in your account - including adding and deleting other users and projects.
• Web Designer
  This gives the user limited access only to projects you allow. Web Designer Users can view stats and configure the tracking and installation code.
• Billing
  This gives the user limited access only to projects you allow. Billing Users can view stats, view and pay invoices and upgrade and downgrade your account.
• Stats Viewer
  This gives the user limited access only to projects you allow. It gives the user the ability to view the stats for each project you allow.
• Restricted Stats Viewer
  This gives the user limited access only to projects you allow. It gives the user the ability to view only the Summary Stats for each project you allow.

How do I change the User Access to a project?
To change the User Access to a project, go to the My Projects page in your StatCounter account. Click the lock icon lock beside your project name. Check the box beside the users you want to have access to this project. Finally, click Update Project Access.

How do I change the settings for a User?
To change the settings for a User, click Users in the top navigation bar. Click the “Pencil and Paper” icon beside the chosen username to edit the User.

WARNING
Please be extremely careful in allowing third parties to have Admin Access to your StatCounter account. Your account may be compromised if you allow a third party to have Admin Access to your account.

With StatCounter you have always had the option to make your StatCounter stats public. This feature allows you to provide visitors to your site with a link to view all your StatCounter stats.

Further to many requests we have now implemented Restricted Public Stats. This option allows you to provide visitors to your site with a link to view only the “Summary Stats” page of your StatCounter stats.

To enable/disable public stats:

• Log in to your StatCounter account.
• Click the ‘lock’ icon beside your project name.

• Click your preferred option
• Public Stats are Disabled
• Only Summary Stats Are Public
• All Stats Are Public
• If you are making your stats public, note the URL to use to send visitors to your StatCounter account e.g.
  http://my.statcounter.com…project_id=xxxxxx&guest=1
• Click ‘Upgrade Project Access’ and that’s it!

Microsoft’s Bing overtook Yahoo! as the number two search engine in the United States and worldwide on Thursday (4th June) according to our StatCounter Global Stats data. Bing grabbed market share from Google.

“It remains to be seen if Bing falls away after the initial novelty and promotion but at first sight it looks like Microsoft is on to a winner,” commented Aodhan Cullen, CEO, StatCounter. “Steve Ballmer is quoted as saying that he wanted Microsoft to become the second biggest search engine within five years. Following the breakdown in talks to acquire Yahoo! at a cost of $40bn it looks as if he may have just achieved that with Bing much sooner and a lot cheaper than anticipated.”

Our analysis finds that in the US Bing leapfrogged Yahoo to take second place on 16.28%. Yahoo! has 10.22%. Google still commands the US search engine market with 71.47%.

Globally Bing at 5.62% has taken a narrow lead over Yahoo! (5.13%). Google worldwide retains 87.62% of the market.

StatCounter Global Stats, a free online service which captures market share battles of search engines, browsers and operating systems including mobile, was launched in March this year.

The StatCounter Global Stats research data is based on four billion pageloads per month. Other regional and country breakdowns can be viewed at: http://gs.statcounter.com

Full press release available here.

UPDATE 11 June 2009:
While Bing has fallen back to third place behind Google and Yahoo! it is winning market share for Microsoft against its two main rivals in the US and worldwide according to our latest analysis.

We analyzed search engine market share two weeks before and after the formal launch of Bing on May 28th (14th May to the 27th May and the 28th May to 10th June). For the US market it found:
Google decreased from 78.68% to 77.94% (-0.74%)
Yahoo decreased from 11.46% to 10.76% (-0.7%)
Microsoft (Bing, MSN Search and Live Search) increased from 7.4% to 9% (+1.6%)
(See here and here)

“It is too early to say what the long term result will be but this is a creditable performance by Bing,” commented Aodhan Cullen, CEO StatCounter. “It remains to be seen what happens to Bing after user curiosity and the reported $100m advertising budget runs out.”

Worldwide, comparing the two weeks before and after the Bing launch, StatCounter reports a similar trend with Microsoft taking market share.
Google decreased from 89.81% to 89.69% (-0.12%)
Yahoo decreased from 5.34% to 5.1% (-0.24%)
Microsoft (Bing, MSN Search and Live Search) increased from 3.08% to 3.5% (+0.42%)
(See here and here)

Full press release available here.

Hi folks,

You can now change your “My Projects” page to display Unique Visitors instead of Page Views. To make the change:

• Log in to your StatCounter account
• Click the ‘My Profile’ link in the top navigation bar



• Click the ‘Edit Profile’ button
• For ‘My Projects Display Metric’ choose Unique Visitors



• Enter your password
• Finally click ‘Update My Profile’

We’re delighted to provide you with this new option and many thanks to the various StatCounter members who requested this. Please keep your feedback and ideas coming!

Hi Folks!

New Filter
We’ve added a NEW filter to the Popular Pages stat.

What does this New Filter do?
This new filter helps you to identify your converting keywords.

Your “converting keywords” are the keywords that result in visitors to your site:

• making a purchase
• signing up for a service
• downloading a brochure
• or completing any other desired action on your site

How does this help me?
Information about your converting keywords is incredibly valuable.

If you can identify the exact search terms that actually result in sales (or sign-ups, or downloads, etc) on your site, then you can focus your advertising and SEO efforts on these terms. This should allow you to maximize your revenues and minimise your spend on marketing.

Can I see an example?
Sure! Let’s use this fictional site “Bites Bakery” to explain how this works…

Bites Bakery
Bites Bakery has a website which allows its customers to order cakes and other baked goods online. For Bites Bakery, a conversion (or success) is the placement of an order online.


Keyword Analysis
With StatCounter your “Keyword Analysis” gives you a list of the ACTUAL search terms used to find your site. For Bites Bakery, you can see that people searched for :

bites bakery
chocolate cake
cherry pie recipe etc

From the above, we know the search terms that are bringing visitors to Bites Bakery… but which of these search terms result in actual orders being placed? To find this out, we need to look at the Popular Pages stat…

Popular Pages

If we look at the Popular Pages for Bites Bakery, we can see that:

• 257 people visited the homepage
• 31 people added a product to their baskets
• 6 people tried to checkout
• But only 4 people successfully completed the order process and visited the order-confirmation.php page - it’s these “converting keywords” that we are really interested in.
  (Don’t forget! It’s the “converting keywords” that result in a sale/sign-up/download on your site!)

We want to find out which keywords result in people confirming an order. To do this, we drilldown on the page www.bitesbakery.com/order-confirmation.php and apply the Keyword Analysis filter.

Popular Pages - Drilldown Arrow
First step is to click the “drilldown” arrow beside the webpage you are interested in. For Bites Bakery, we are interested in people who made an order online - that is, the people who reached the Order Confirmation page.


Popular Pages - Apply Filter
Next step is to apply the “Keyword Analysis” filter - click the link.


Popular Pages - Filtered by Keyword Analysis
Now, we see a list of the keywords used by the visitors who reached the Order Confirmation page. With this information we can see that:

Although 40 people found the Bites Bakery Site by searching for “chocolate cake” (see Keyword Analysis), only 1 of these people “converted” and placed an order online (see Popular Pages filtered by Keyword Analysis). That means for the search term “chocolate cake” we had 1 order from 40 searches => 2.5% conversion rate

On the other hand, while only 9 people found the site by searching for “dark chocolate cake” (see Keyword Analysis), 1 of these people “converted (see Popular Pages filtered by Keyword Analysis). That’s 1 order from 9 searches => 11% conversion rate

From the above it’s clear that we are getting a far better return on the search term “dark chocolate cake” than for “chocolate cake” - this information is useful in deciding where to direct our SEO efforts and marketing spend.

Summary
Use the “Keyword Analysis” filter on “Popular Pages” to identify the search terms that send visitors to a particular page on your site.

Note re New StatCounter SC4 System
As a result of the delays we have experienced converting all members to the new StatCounter platform, we have made this new filter available on BOTH the old StatCounter SC3 system as well as on the new SC4 system. Our tech team continue to work on the conversion project - we are terribly anxious to get the conversion done as this will allow us to release many new features and improvements. Thanks so much for your patience and enjoy the new filter!

Mozilla Firefox 3 overtook Microsoft’s Internet Explorer 6 for the first time in February in the Internet Browser Wars according to monthly data from StatCounter Global Stats - our new free analysis tool.

Internet Explorer 7 continues to lead globally with 41% market share. However, Firefox 3 is now in second place with 24% replacing IE 6.

Click here to view full size graph.

“Since its launch less than a year ago, Firefox 3 has attained nearly one quarter of the global market,” commented Aodhan Cullen, CEO and founder, StatCounter. “IE 7 is consistently holding about 40% of the global market but IE 6 has fallen from 28% in July last to 22% in February this year.”**

The growth in usage of Firefox 3 can be partly attributed to users upgrading to the new version - Firefox 2 market share has fallen from 16% to 3% in the period.

Microsoft’s combined IE 7 and IE 6 market share has fallen from 68% in July last year to 63% now. IE 8 has gained a toehold in the market of just over 1%. Firefox 3 and 2 has grown from 25% in July last to 27% in February 2009.

** Source: Figures based on monthly StatCounter Global Stats analysis.

StatCounter is delighted to announce the launch of our new free Global Stats tool. The tool records market share of Search Engines, Browsers and Operating Systems including mobile.

You can use StatCounter Global Stats to monitor issues such as:

• how Google’s new browser Chrome is doing against Microsoft Internet Explorer
• how the iPhone is succeeding against traditional market leader Nokia in the mobile browser market - see iPhone Takes Global Lead in Mobile Browser Wars press release

Click here to access StatCounter Global Stats!

The analysis is currently based on four billion pageloads per month and is updated approximately five times per day.

Users can:

• Create and customize charts
• Download graphs
• Access the raw data
• Sign up for alerts

“This is probably the most comprehensive global web analysis you can get and certainly for free,” commented former Gartner senior executive, Oisin Byrne who now heads independent tech research company, iReach. “StatCounter is shaking up the web research market by being able to provide such comprehensive statistics at no cost to users.”

There is no charge for use of the data or charts but users must reference StatCounter as the source.

Press Queries to:
Kerri Crowley/Ronnie Simpson (Simpson Financial & Technology PR)

Hi folks,

Our Mission…
At StatCounter, it’s our mission to help webmasters, bloggers and other interested parties to grow and improve their websites, blogs and online businesses.

While we already have members in over 200 countries worldwide, we want to reach out to an even wider audience…

To achieve this, we have been working on translating StatCounter. This means that many current members will soon be able to access StatCounter in their native languages AND we will also be able to reach many non-English speakers for the very first time!

Going Hungarian…
This is why we are delighted to announce that StatCounter is now available in Hungarian! The Hungarian translation of StatCounter acted as a “trial” for us and allowed us to set up all the systems required to translate the site into numerous other languages.

Going Global…
Now… we need YOUR help. We are looking for volunteers to help us translate the site into other languages. Volunteer translators must be native speakers of a non-English language but also have strong English skills.

What Languages?
This is entirely up to you, our members! Translations will be prioritized based on the demand for the different languages… so let us know your preferences!

Volunteers
If you would like to volunteer to help with this project, then please accept our sincere thanks. We are so grateful to each and every one of you for considering this request and for your support for StatCounter.
To get started, you must open a StatCounter Translator Account. You’ll find out further information by clicking the link below:

Join the StatCounter Translation Team!

For administrative reasons, the number of translators per language will be capped. This may mean that we will be unable to accept everyone who volunteers to help with this project or, in certain circumstances, it may be necessary to suspend/close some Translator Accounts. Please accept our sincere apologies if we are unable to accept your offer of assistance at this time and we thank you in advance for your understanding in this regard.

Please feel free to leave any questions, comments or feedback below. Thanks!