Page hit counters, yes or no? opinions please.

Just wondered what the general concensus was on having a hit counter on a page nowadays. Are they acceptable or generally frowned upon?

I used the code from an old website for the new one I am constructing but the counter obviously didnt start at zero.

If I did decide to put in a counter, where would be a good place to get one? Seems like alot of the so called free ones available on the net are riddled with adverts in their coding!
As its a car site Im constructing, I quite liked the idea of using one that looks a little like the trip meter from a speedo, white on black squares.

So, yes or know, if yes where's a good place to look. Thanks.

Web design course starts next week so hopefully proper questions from then!

Yes have one but don't show them. I use google analytics the best free one you can get i think.

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Generally i dont take any notice of it however i feel it is unnecessary in some cases.

The above that Simon has named is great and free.

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Yeah I think hit counters that show on the page are not usually a good idea. Depending on the purpose of the site a visible counter might be appropriate, but I feel it dates the site and makes it look less professional.

I think it is fine to show how many people has viewed your article but i feel it is useless if you show how many people has viewed your homepage. Who cares??

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Amen to that

plus people ignore the number of visits anyway because usually you can set what it starts from so it doesn't look like your site isn't visited during the early days!

Counters are FYI,
other users don't care

I agree with alex on this matter, also when i visit a site with a counter i get the feeling that it is dated.

I use google analytics for all stats analysis and it is free.

Simple page hit counters are useless, unless your getting detailed information by the visitors your not helping anyone really.
Someone could simply refresh a page a few hundred times, and you think you've had alot of unique hits. As the others said, google analytics is one of the best to use, i however use awstats.

Yep, I feel the same as everyone else. Counters degrade your website, and make it look unprofessional. You can check out Google Analytics or Mint. Mint is not free, but it is very good.

That why i have google stats to work out the users, browser, pc, screen resolution etc

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