Update: Feedjit has been shutdown now.
Feedjit is perhaps the most popular traffic counter commonly seen on majority of free blogs (especially those hosted freely on blogspot). I fell in love with Feedjit when I was new to blogging and ever since then it became my first choice as a traffic counter.
Its intuitive way of displaying live visitors is still unparalleled to any traffic counter of its kind! If you are a regular reader of this blog then you might have noticed a small change – Feedjit gone! I replaced it with statcounter and there are 5 solid reasons that helped me coming down to this decision. Here they are:
1. It displays visitors’ stats publicly
No one likes their surfing footprints to be displayed publicly and this is what Feedjit does! You can find the live traffic stream of any website using Feedjit at – live.feedjit.com/live/homepageurl/0/. Moreover, it also displays the exact search query used by the visitors to arrive at a particular webpage. I know that not everyone is offended at this notoriety, but I value the privacy of my every single reader!
Contrary to that, statcounter provides you with an option of invisible tracking – the ability to monitor the visitor activity right from your statcounter account. That’s the very first reason why I decided to replace it with statcounter.
2. Ad-supported & leaks out pagerank
Free version of Feedjit comes at the price of advertisements. When I’m not even using AdSense on my site (update: now I’m using) then why should I tolerate those misleading text and banner ads? Secondly, from a webmaster’s point of view – like any other widget, the feedjit widget also leaks the pagerank of the homepage. Contrary, statcounter’s invisible tracking does the same job fairly well and that too without leaking out any pagerank.
3. A morbid obsession for traffic
Having using feedjit for over a year, it made me a traffic maniac. I was so obsessed with the live traffic stream that after every one hour I used to open that URL on my mobile device to count the number of visitors in a day. I was in fact addicted to those shiny country flags and browser icons. Besides giving me this unhealthy addiction, this morbid obsession also contributed around 30% to my mobile bill every month. Don’t know why I’m not at all obsessed with statcounter 😛
4. Not seen on top blogs
One of the best things about blogging is that you can always learn from the top blogs in your niche. Have a look at Problogger and Copyblogger. They are not using Feedjit, perhaps because it’s kiddish to boast off the traffic count & most importantly they value the privacy of their loyal readers at the very first place.
5. Traffic log limit
Feedjit has a short traffic log limit. In the process of tracking new visitors, the old ones are lost! That’s the final reason why I replaced it with statcounter (which provides full tracking details of up to 500 entries)
Congregating it all, here’s a detailed comparison table of the two traffic counters:
| Feedjit | StatCounter | |
| Free | Yes | Yes |
| Ad Supported | Yes (Ads appear on the feedjit widget installed on your website) | No (Ads appear on their own website) |
| Invisible/background tracking | No (the widget has to be present on the sidebar for the counter to work) | Yes (No need to add any widget, just add the tracking code in the html and you are good to go) |
| Traffic log limit | short & depends on how busy your website is. The more busy your website, the more quickly your old traffic log gets lost | 500 entries (log limit independent of how busy your website is) |
| Tracking type | Basic (just visiting country, browser, OS, source and exit links) | Advanced (besides basic tracking, it provides several advanced tracking details like IP, ISP, popular pages, average time on the site and much more) |
So which one is your favourite traffic counter? Do you also prefer statcounter over feedjit? Feel free to share your thoughts!
Hehe it’s so old but still true… I recommend new Statcounter version:
https://wordpress.org/plugins/sc-littlebizzy/
I got rid-off feedjit and using stacounter the free version. I def like it. Thank You for this post.
Nice post Abhishek. I also liked StatCounter over Feedjit.
I just installed StatCounter on my site and ditched Feedjit because of your post! I wasn’t aware of these things. Thank youuu!
Hi Jam. Thanks for your comment. I hope that you are enjoying StatCounter 🙂
I am very disappointed with feedjit because My site is on https port and it not allow http code. Automatically hide the counter for security reason. I am no searching alternative of it. If you know , please tell me here.
Use Statcounter or Google Analytics.
feedjit is usefull but they use it to plug ads to in feedjit we installed, if i see, now the ads that always show is from facebook. it could be found on top right corner of feedjit widget
Hi again…also, Feedjit no longer updates unless I refresh the page. I’m not sure if the two problems are related but probably. Thanks for any input! 🙂
Hi and many thanks for your offer to help, however off topic!
I didn’t change the browswer but did get a new computer.
I don’t think that’s when the problem started but it may have.
By Feedjit URL, do you mean this:
http://live.feedjit.com/live/theprovencepost.blogspot.com/0/
Thank you!
🙂
Hi Julie. I tested your feedjit URL. I also encountered the same issue – no ‘bonk’ sound and the feed is not being updated in real-time (I’ve to manually refresh the page to see who’s coming). As far as that ‘bonk’ sound is concerned, there’s an option there to turn the sound on/off. Make sure that it is turned on. Regarding your second issue, it looks like this is a problem from Feedjit’s end. Try contacting them via email/twitter/whatever, and see if they can help. Thanks for visiting my blog 🙂
From what I can tell, Feedjit accepts no communication from users. Their Twitter hasn’t been used in years…their comment form goes to an error page…they publish no email or helpline. I’ll give up on them and find another hit counter. I’ll have to live without the bonk. Many thanks for your help!
Ahh…Looks like they are no longer interested in developing their product further. Anyways, do give statcounter a try! 🙂
Last question, promise. Do any of the counters mentioned in your story offer the sound I’m looking for? THANK YOU!
Haha 😀 No, I don’t think so. Looks like you’ve seriously fallen in love with the “bonk sound” of Feedjit :p
Ok, I guess I shall have to live without it…boo hoo! Many thanks for your time and advice. Much appreciated!
I use Statcounter and Feedjit together. They fit nicely in the top left corner of my Tumblr site. I even have Statcounter on my cellphone. In that way I can always check to see who has visited my site recently. As for the sound I don’t hear anything but it’s not important.
Abhishek, do you mind a Feedjit question? I may switch to Statcounter based on what you’ve written here but…I like to enable the sound on Feedjit’s real time view when I put up a new blog post. It’s gratifying to hear the ping! each time someone logs on to my blog. But for the last few weeks, the sound appears to no longer work. Any idea how to bring it back? Again, I know this isn’t germane to your blog post but the Feedjit help page is also down and don’t know who else to ask. I’ve uninstalled and re-installed Feedjit a few times, without success. Many Thanks!
Hi Julie. Though this is a little off-topic, but sure, I can help 🙂
This could be an issue with your web browser itself. Did you try changing your browser? Also, if you don’t mind, can I see your feedjit URL so that I can better diagnose the problem?
Yeah, I should probably get rid of feedjit on my blog soon. It definitely makes one unhealthily obsessed with hits and stats.
Hmmm… Interesting post.
I’m not a blogger though but I learnt.
Wanted to add it to a website I’m developing.
I converted to statcounter from feedjit a few days ago after reading this post. I am in complete agreement with 3; I no longer obsessively monitor traffic (no idea why either). Thanks for the conversion 🙂
Glad it was helpful for you! 🙂
Thank you for the advice.
You’re welcome 🙂
I can hide the feedjit live counter in blogger and it continues to work as before. 🙂
That’s great Pulkit! There must be a hack for doing that. But still, there are many areas where feedjit still lacks behind statcounter 🙂
Both the widgets are great. I loved feedjit the way it shows my live visitors and statcounters is good for checking consolidated report.
You can easily hide by putting it in a Div with visibility set to None. I use both the widgets on same blog.
Yup, both of them are good in their own areas. Feedjit is more like an eye candy while statcounter provides far better comprehensive reports as you said 🙂
Hi –
How do I hide the feedjit live counter in Blogger? My aim is to hide it from visitors but that I’ll be able to view it.
ima try mate 😉 thanks.
https://soundcloud.com/ktogscore
Have a feed button on your site. It helps site visitors to subscribe to your blog feed. Thanks for the nice article.
The subscription form is there on the right sidebar! Thanks 4 the feedback 😉