Is there a FREE service or software package that will allow you to gather statistics about websites? Say for instance I wanted to know how many people visited the download.com website today.
Web statistics for your own site may easily be obtained from a number of software applications available, either installed directly on your server or from a third party that does the monitoring for you.
However, if you wish to know the stats of a web site not your own, you are SOL. Unless the owner of the site allows you to see their stats, you cannot access them as you see fit.
You can check a site like Alexa.com for some basic traffic. These are gathered through their software - which I’ve never used but it is some sort of web search software. Their numbers aren’t real world, but it will give you an idea anyway.
This is what they have on download.com
http://www.alexa.com/data/details/traffic_details?q=&url=download.com
I think the Alexa statistics are only valid for people that have the Alexa toolbar installed. So, their statistics will be biased towards Alexa “users”. I downloaded and installed their toolbar, and then my spyware detector promptly told me to remove it. :dubious:
I don’t know if it’s spyware proper, but it’s snoopware that’s for sure.