See who is visiting your site

It is already counting

By the end of this page you will know how many people came to your site last week, what they looked at, and whether they were on a phone. You will also have proved the number is real rather than taking our word for it.

There is no setup step, and that is the first thing worth saying plainly. Every site built here reports its own page views from the day it is built. There is no code to paste, no tag to install, no account to open with anybody, and no switch to find.

Two things do the counting and you had to arrange neither. Your site carries a counter of its own, written into it while it was being built. And the address we hand out is served by a page of ours, which counts as well — which is why a site built long before any of this existed still has numbers on it.

Before you start

An account

Signed in, with at least one site that has been built

The address

Your site's live link — it is on the first screen of its dashboard

A second device

A phone, or another browser, for the check at the end

Setup needed

None. Skip to the next section

For the second half

A Google Analytics property of your own, and its measurement ID

Note. A site you export and host on your own address keeps counting, because the counter travels in the files and posts back to us from wherever it ends up. A site built before the counter was added does not carry it, and a copy of that hosted elsewhere gives you nothing to read.

Find the numbers

The numbers live on the site's own dashboard, one per site. Nothing is pooled across an account, so a site you built for somebody else keeps its visits to itself.

1. Sign in and open your list of sites — the Home row down the left-hand column.
2. On the card for the site you want, press Dashboard. It sits beside Edit at the foot of the card.
3. Read the first tile. It says On the site now, and under it, Last 5 minutes. The tile beside it says Views, for the last thirty days.
4. Press Analytics in the left-hand column for the rest: the daily chart, the pages people opened, and where they arrived from.

Tip. If a line across the top of the Analytics screen says visit tracking is not switched on for this install, stop reading the numbers. That is a different fault from a quiet week, and it is ours — write to us from the contact page rather than assuming nobody came.

Note. The Dashboard link is on every site card from the moment the site exists, including one nobody has visited yet. An empty screen there means nobody has been, not that something is missing.

What each number actually means

Four figures sit across the top of the Analytics screen. They measure different things and it is easy to read one as another, so here is each of them with its catch.

Under those, the chart shows views per day across the range you picked — seven, thirty or ninety days. Every day in the range is drawn, including the ones with nothing on them, because a chart that skips quiet days draws a line that lies about the shape of a week. Ninety days is as far back as the screen will look.

Tip. Visitors is the number to trust when the two disagree. On the address we serve, a site that also carries its own counter reports the page twice — both reports carry the same marker, so the view count can double while the visitor count cannot.

Note. Where they came from lists the referring site as a domain and nothing more. Somebody who typed your address, tapped it in a text message or scanned it off a van brings no referrer at all, so an empty list there is the normal state for a site you are sharing by hand rather than a fault.

Prove it is working

The number is only worth anything if you have seen it move. This takes two minutes and costs nothing.

1. On the dashboard's first screen, find the card headed The site itself and press Copy link.
2. Send it to your own phone and open it there, or open it in a different browser on the same machine.
3. Read the page for a moment — one page is enough.
4. Go back to the dashboard and open Analytics.
5. On the site now should read at least one. The screen re-reads itself every twenty seconds, and again whenever you come back to the tab, so give it that long before you decide it is broken.

Tip. Then check the chart again tomorrow. Today's visit appears in Page views straight away, but the daily bar for today only tells the truth once today has finished.

Note. Your own visit counts. Nothing recognises you as the owner of the site, so an afternoon of opening your own link is an afternoon of visits. If your numbers look higher than the people you have actually told about the site, some of them are you.

The second counter: Google Analytics

This is a separate thing, it is optional, and most small businesses do not need it. Our counter answers the questions a trade business has. Google Analytics answers the questions an advertising department has, and it comes with obligations our counter does not.

It is also connected in a place people do not expect: on an agent, not on a site. An agent is the builder you set up and train, and what you connect to it is passed to every build that agent does.

1. Get your measurement ID first, because the form will ask for it straight away. It is in Google Analytics under Admin, then Data streams, then your stream, and it starts with G-.
2. Back here, open Agents in the left-hand column, and open the agent you build with.
3. In the Tools panel, press + Add tool.
4. Find Google Analytics. It is filed under Practical, or type it into the search box at the top.
5. Press Connect on that row.
6. Paste the ID into the field headed Your GA4 measurement ID, then press Connect.
7. Open the site you want it on and choose that agent beside the box you type into, before you send a turn. Nothing an agent holds reaches a build it did not do.

What the field accepts

The shape

G- followed by four to fourteen letters or digits

Case

Lower case is fine — it is put into capitals for you

Where to find it

In Google Analytics under Admin, then Data streams, then your stream

Refused

An older UA- tracking ID, the address of a stream page, or anything else

If it is refused

The message names the tool and repeats where to look. Nothing is stored

Note. Connecting a tool also adds it and switches it on, including one you had switched off earlier. There is no second button to press afterwards. Removing it later is Disconnect, on the same form.

Whether the tag actually appears

This part is honest rather than encouraging, because you are about to trust a number.

When your agent builds, the instruction to write a Google Analytics snippet with your real measurement ID goes out with the request. So, in the same request, does a standing rule that forbids loading a script or a stylesheet from another site, and forbids any web address that is not already in your site's files. A Google Analytics tag is a script loaded from Google. On top of that, the build does not write the page's head, which is where that tag normally goes.

So the two halves of the same request contradict each other, and which one wins is not decided anywhere. Sometimes a snippet comes back, sometimes it does not. This is our contradiction rather than your mistake, and it is a bug rather than a preference.

1. Connect the ID if you want to, then send a turn so the site is built again.
2. Open your published site in one tab and your Google Analytics property in another, and see whether the visit reaches them.
3. If it does not, nothing you paste on this form will change that until we fix it. Our own counter is unaffected either way and keeps working.

Tip. Do not switch off our counter, delete the site or start again over this. The two are independent, and the numbers on your dashboard are not waiting on anything Google does.

Why the two never quite agree

If you do run both, they will report different numbers for the same week. Neither is lying. They are counting differently, and every difference below is a decision somebody made on purpose.

• Our marker dies when the tab closes. Google's lasts for months. So one person visiting on Monday and again on Friday is two visitors to us and one to them.
• We record the referring site as a domain only, never the search somebody typed. Their reports are far more detailed, which is the trade you are making.
• We decide phone or desktop from how wide the window is. They read the device itself. A wide phone or a narrow laptop window can land on different sides of that line.
• We drop everything after the question mark in an address, so one page is one row however it was linked to. Campaign links that they split apart, we add together.
• A blocker that stops Google Analytics usually leaves ours alone, because ours posts back to the service that built the site rather than to a tracking network.
• On the address we serve, a site carrying its own counter reports each page twice. Views can double there; visitors cannot.

Note. There is one more, and it is a ceiling rather than a difference of method: a single reading covers at most twenty thousand visits in the window you chose. A trade site takes years to reach that. If yours is anywhere near it, tell us from the contact page — a number that has quietly stopped growing is the kind of fault nobody spots from the outside.

What is deliberately not recorded

This is the part most analytics pages are vague about, so here it is flatly.

There is no cookie, no IP address and no fingerprint. The marker that stops one person counting as five is a random string the page makes up, keeps for the life of that tab, and throws away when the tab closes. It cannot follow anybody to another website, it cannot be matched to a name, and it is deliberately not enough to identify anyone.

That is what keeps a site built here on the right side of a cookie banner, which matters when the site belongs to a real business with real customers. Our counter puts nothing on your visitor's device that outlives the tab they are reading in, and holds nothing that could be matched back to them afterwards.

• Which page was opened, without the query string or the part after the hash.
• The referring site as a bare domain, with nothing of what they searched for.
• Phone, tablet or desktop, worked out from the width of the window.
• A random per-tab marker, and the time.

Note. Connect Google Analytics and this changes completely. Your site then tracks its visitors properly, with everything that follows — and the privacy notice and the consent banner your visitors are owed become yours to write. We cannot write them for you, because they are about your website rather than about ours.

How long it is kept

Nothing expires on a timer, so a visit recorded last year is still held. The screen will not look further back than ninety days, though, which means in practice you cannot read it — the record outlives the view of it.

Deleting the site deletes its visits with it, and deleting your account deletes every visit across every site. Neither is recoverable, and neither leaves a copy behind.

What it will not tell you

Worth setting expectations against, because these are the things people ask for after a fortnight of watching the chart.

• Who anybody is. No names, no email addresses, no company names, no phone numbers — a visit is not a lead.
• When somebody left, or how long they stayed. Nothing on a static page reports that.
• Whether the same person came back last month. The marker is gone by then, on purpose.
• Anything about the people who visit your other sites. Each site's numbers are its own.
• Where you rank in a search engine. This counts arrivals; it is not a ranking tool.

Note. It also does not email you. Nothing here arrives in your inbox — the numbers sit on the dashboard and wait for you, the same way your leads do.

Common questions

Do I need a cookie banner because of this?

Not for our counter. It sets no cookie, records no IP address, and stores nothing that identifies anybody. Connect Google Analytics and the answer changes — that is a tracker, and the notice and the banner are yours to write.

Does my own visit count?

Yes. Nothing recognises you as the owner. If you want a clean week, stop opening your own link and send it to somebody else instead.

It says zero and I know people have looked.

Check three things: the range button, which starts at thirty days; whether the warning line about visit tracking is showing, which is a fault at our end; and whether they opened the address we serve or a copy hosted somewhere else. A copy only counts if the counter is in the files that went with it.

Can I see every site's visitors on one screen?

Not today. Each site's dashboard holds its own numbers and there is no screen that adds them up. That is a missing feature rather than a hidden one.

Can I ask about my visitors in the chat while I am editing?

Yes. A build turn is given the site's real traffic, so asking what last month looked like gets a real answer rather than a guess. It costs a turn, though, and the dashboard is free — read it there unless you want the site changed because of what it says.

Does the counter slow my website down?

No. It reports after the page has drawn, it never waits for us, and a report that fails is dropped silently. A visit we lose is one row of a chart, which is not worth a slow website.