# See your visitors

URL: https://pro-weather.com/docs/visitors

> A built-in visitor count for your weather site, with an optional counter in your public footer.

Every Pro Weather site counts its own visitors. You'll find the numbers on the
**Analytics** tab of your site in the dashboard, and you can choose to show a
visitor counter in your site's footer.

Nothing to install, no account to create, and no cookie banner needed. If you
want the full picture (which pages, which countries, which links people came
from), you can also [add Google Analytics](https://pro-weather.com/docs/google-analytics) alongside it.

## Where to find your numbers

1. In your dashboard, open your site and go to **Analytics**.
2. You'll see four totals - **today**, the **last 7 days**, the **last 30 days**
   and **all time** - plus a bar chart of the last 30 days.

Each total shows two figures: **visitors** (people) and **page views** (loads).

> **Included on every plan**
>
  Counting starts as soon as your site is published, on the trial and on the Pro
  plan alike.

## Show the counter on your site

1. Open your site and go to **Appearance**.
2. Find the **Visitor counter** card and turn on **Show "visitors today ·
   total"**.
3. Choose **Save**.

Your footer then shows a line like:

> 👁 38 visitors today · 12,847 total

It appears just under your social links, above the "Powered by Pro Weather"
line, and it's translated into whichever [site
language](https://pro-weather.com/docs/customizing/appearance) you've chosen.

Turning the counter off doesn't stop the counting. Your Analytics tab keeps
filling up either way; the switch only decides whether visitors see the number.

## What gets counted

- **Visitors** are counted **once per day**. Someone who reads your site three
  times before lunch is one visitor and three page views. Someone who comes back
  tomorrow is counted again, which is why the all-time figure is really a total
  of daily visits.
- **Page views** count every load, including reloads.
- **Bots and crawlers** are left out. Search engines, uptime checkers and link
  previewers don't inflate your numbers.
- **Days run midnight to midnight UTC**, not in your station's local time. Your
  weather day belongs to your station; your visitors arrive from everywhere.
- **Your own visits count too.** There's no way for us to tell you apart from
  anyone else without tracking you, which is rather the point. If you check your
  own site every morning, expect roughly one extra visitor a day.

## Privacy

This counter is deliberately built so that it doesn't need consent:

- **No cookies** are set, and no identifier is stored in your visitors'
  browsers.
- **No IP addresses are kept.** To tell one visitor from another within a day,
  we hash the request behind a random code that is thrown away every night. Once
  it's gone, the hash can't be traced back to anyone - and the same person on
  two different days can't be linked either.
- **All that's stored** is two numbers per day per site: how many visitors, and
  how many page views.

That's different from [Google Analytics](https://pro-weather.com/docs/google-analytics), which does use
cookies and therefore only loads for visitors who accept them on your consent
banner. The two work happily side by side.

## Troubleshooting

### My counter shows nothing on the public site

- **Check that it's switched on** under **Appearance → Visitor counter**, and
  that you saved.
- **Check that your site is published.** An unpublished site shows "coming soon"
  and counts nothing.
- **Check your ad blocker.** Some blockers stop the request that both records
  and fetches the count. The count itself is unaffected for everyone else; you
  simply won't see the line yourself.

### The numbers look lower than I expected

Search engines and other bots are excluded on purpose, so this count is usually
lower than a raw server log. It's also lower than a "hits" counter, because the
headline figure is people rather than page loads.

### Today's number went up but the chart hasn't changed

The chart's last bar *is* today, and it updates as you go. Earlier days are
finalised once a night, so a day that just ended settles into place the next
morning.

## Next steps

- [Add Google Analytics](https://pro-weather.com/docs/google-analytics)
- [Use a custom domain](https://pro-weather.com/docs/custom-domain)
- [Share your data on weather networks](https://pro-weather.com/docs/publishing)