Not for this blog, but for my new reading Scripture web site, which, coincidentally, also runs on WordPress software. (In cast you’re wondering, this site only had 21 page views in January 2011, down from 135 in January 2010. But than, I still have search engines blocked for this blog.)

I was not entirely satisfied with the Site Stats software that came with WordPress, so I researched various plugin programs until I found the wonderful kStats Reloaded by Mark Waterous. I installed it on January 5. The really nice thing about kStats is that it not only tracks page views but also unique visitors on a daily basis.

Not long after uploading and activating it, however, I noticed that it was reporting a different page view total than Site Stats. For the entire month of January, Site Stats is showing 3,099 page views for reading Scripture, while kStats is showing 3,985 (more views!) for January 5 through 31 (a shorter period!). The difference is mysterious and perplexing, especially since I know that kStats counts spiders and feeds separately, so I know that they’re not included in the total page views, but I don’t really know what Site Stats does not count that kStats does, other than “Visits from browsers that do not execute javascript or load images” (whatever that means!) and “GoogleBot and other search engine spiders,” according WordPress.com’s Stats support page.

Perhaps when I get the chance to compare the same full month of stats from each program the reason for the difference will become. Until (and probably after) that time, one thing remains obvious: my next major visitor-tracking goal is to install Google Analytics.