What you get
- No cookies and nothing stored on your readers’ phones or computers, so there’s no cookie banner to show for ReaderCount
- No personal data: internet addresses are never stored, and nobody can be followed from one day to the next or from one website to another
- Bots and scripts left out before they reach your numbers, with a note saying how many
- A small script, under 2 KB, that loads after your page and doesn’t slow it down
- Your own visits left out with one link per browser
How readers are counted without cookies
To count unique readers, a stats tool has to tell one reader from another. Most do it by storing an ID on the reader’s device in a cookie, which follows them for months and needs their consent. ReaderCount works it out on our servers instead, fresh each day:
- A page loads and the ReaderCount script sends the page’s address and where the reader came from.
- Our server scrambles the reader’s internet address and browser name together with your website’s name and a secret that changes every day. The result is a code, called a hash, that can’t be turned back into what went in.
- The internet address is thrown away. Only the code is kept, with the page, the source, the country, the kind of device and the browser.
- At midnight (UTC) the secret is replaced and the old one is deleted. From then on, nobody, including us, can match today’s codes to yesterday’s.
Within one day, the same reader reading three posts has the same code, so they count as one visitor with three page views. The next day they get a new code. On another website, they have a different code again.
What this means for your numbers: visitors are counted per day. Someone who reads your blog on Monday and again on Tuesday counts as a visitor on each day, so a week’s visitors is the total of each day’s. Page views, time on page, sources and everything else work as you’d expect.
What is and isn’t kept
| Kept | Never kept |
|---|---|
The page’s address, without anything after ? except campaign tags | Internet addresses |
| Where the reader came from, as a website name or campaign tag | Cookies or IDs on the reader’s device |
| Country, kind of device, browser and operating system | Names, email addresses or anything typed into a form |
| Time on page, how far down the page they got and the page’s speed | Mouse movements, keystrokes or recordings of the screen |
| Links clicked and goals completed | Anything that links a reader across days or websites |
The full list is in our privacy policy. Your stats are never sold, never used for advertising and never used to train AI.
How fake traffic is left out
Bots, scripts and server checks can make your numbers look better than they are. ReaderCount checks every hit and leaves out anything that isn’t a person reading a page:
| Check | What it leaves out |
|---|---|
| Known bots | Search engine crawlers, AI crawlers, link previews (such as WhatsApp and Facebook), uptime monitors, speed tests and automated browsers. Most of these don’t run the script at all; the ones that do are recognised by name. |
| Cloud servers | Hits from servers rented from Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, DigitalOcean, Hetzner, OVHcloud, Linode, Vultr, Oracle Cloud, Alibaba Cloud, Tencent Cloud, Contabo, Scaleway, Leaseweb and others. People read from homes, offices and phones, not from these. |
| Not from a web page | Hits sent by a script rather than from a real page on your website, and hits claiming to come from a page that isn’t on your website. |
| Too many pages | One visitor loading more than 300 pages in a day, far more than a person reads. Offices and phone networks share an address, so the limit is generous. |
| Clicks with no page | A link click that arrives without the page view it happened on. |
Privacy services that pass real readers through big networks, such as iCloud Private Relay, are still counted.
Leave your own visits out
Your own visits aren’t readers either. To stop counting them:
- Open any page of your website with
#readercount-ignoreon the end of the address, such ashttps://yourblog.com/#readercount-ignore. The live view has a ready-made link for each of your websites. - Do it once in each browser you use: on your computer, phone and tablet.
- To be counted again, open your website with
#readercount-counton the end.
This is the one thing ReaderCount ever stores in a browser, and only in yours, because you asked it to.
The script
ReaderCount is one line in your website’s <head>:
<script defer src="https://app.readercount.com/s.js" data-site="yourblog.com"></script>- Under 2 KB when sent compressed, about 50 times lighter than Google Analytics.
defermeans it loads after your page, so readers see your content first.- It sets no cookies and reads nothing from the reader’s device.
- It works on any website: WordPress (with our plugin), Ghost (see Ghost setup), or any other website that lets you add a line of code to its pages.
Why your numbers differ from Google Analytics
If you run ReaderCount alongside Google Analytics for a while, the numbers won’t match, and that’s expected:
- Cookie banners: Google Analytics usually only counts readers who click Accept. ReaderCount needs no consent banner, so it counts everyone.
- Blockers: many browsers and extensions block Google Analytics.
- Visitors per day: ReaderCount counts unique visitors each day, while Google Analytics tries to follow people for longer with a cookie.
- Bots: each tool filters bots in its own way.
Moving over? Our guides cover Google Analytics, Plausible, Fathom and Simple Analytics.
Questions
Do I need a cookie banner for ReaderCount?
Not for ReaderCount: it sets no cookies, stores nothing on your readers’ devices and keeps no personal data. If other tools on your website use cookies, you may still need a banner for those.
Can ReaderCount tell me who my readers are?
No, and that’s on purpose. You see how many people read what, where they came from, their country and their kind of device. Nobody, including us, can see who they are.
Why does one person count as two visitors?
Visitors are counted per day, because the code that tells readers apart changes every day. Someone who reads on two days counts once on each day. They also count again if they switch from their phone to their computer.
Are AI crawlers counted?
No. AI crawlers and search engine crawlers are bots, and are left out. Readers who click through to you from an AI tool are counted, in the Found by AI card.
Where is my data kept?
On Cloudflare. You can delete your account and every visit counted for it at any time from Settings on your stats page.
Still have a question? Get in touch and we’ll help.