Start with a website you can edit
To measure visits directly, you need permission to add code to the website. A traffic checker that estimates visits to someone else’s domain is doing a different job. It cannot show you the events our tag actually receives on your own site.
Before installing anything, choose the question you want to answer. “Did my new article find an audience?” needs pageviews, visitors and referrers. “Did my newsletter bring people back?” also needs a tagged campaign link. A specific question makes the dashboard useful from day one.
Add the tag once, across your site
You register a website, not a list of individual pages. Use your site’s shared template or the platform’s header-code setting so that new pages get the tag too.
- Create a free Visitor Tracking account and choose Add website.
- Enter a recognisable name and your domain. A full address such as https://example.com/ is accepted.
- Copy the installation tag generated for that website. It contains the website’s unique ID.
- Paste it into the shared HTML head and publish the change. Install a single copy on each page.
- Visit the published website, then use Check installation and look for your pageview in Realtime.
Read three numbers first
Visitors estimates distinct browser and network combinations. Views counts page loads and tracked navigation. Referrers and campaign parameters help explain where the traffic came from. Start with a complete day so a partial afternoon is not compared with a full yesterday.
Open your top pages and ask whether the pages you care about are receiving visits. Then look at sources. A small, relevant newsletter can be more useful than a much larger source whose visitors never reach your important pages. Counts describe activity; your goals give it meaning.
Check more than the home page
Visit a second page, refresh it, and try your site on a phone. If you have a single-page application, test its navigation too. Our standard tag detects pushState and replaceState transitions; bare Back/Forward navigation needs an appropriate router integration.
A tag cannot record a visit if it never loads or its request is blocked. Ad blockers, network failures and configuration mistakes can leave gaps. Treat verification as part of installation, and repeat a small check after changing your theme, router or consent setup.