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One of our recent posts covered the topic of reducing the number of plug-ins a blogger might install on their WordPress site. I received a couple of emails asking why statistics plug-ins like Wp-Stats or Stat Counter weren’t included in the list of necessary plug-ins. We do apologize for forgetting to mention these, but will explain why they were left off the list.

Quite frankly, these kinds of plug-ins have long been considered by us to be simply distracting and unnecessary. Most of us usually install some kind of “real-time” stat tracking plug-in when we first go live with our site. With few exceptions, most people then turn to the stats every 10, 20 or 60 minutes and continually refresh their page to see how many visits they are getting. Take our word for it, you are wasting your time, and the time of your visitors.

At first glance it may seem like this one little plug-in wouldn’t slow down a site, but if the object is to make the site load as fast as possible, then the answer is to reduce your plug-ins to the bare minimum you may need. Stats programs are unnecessary for two reasons:

1) Rather than relying on stats programs, most advertisers and businesses rely heavily on the reporting provided by Google. Page Ranks are assigned by Google, the majority of searches are done on Google, and a big part of Google’s job of indexing content involves their statistical engines. Instead of installing local stats programs, just go to Google Analytics and install their tracking code. Yes, you may have to wait a whole day to find out how many visits you received, but that will free up a large amount of time to actually write quality content. Stop worrying about your visitors and create content they want.

2) Local statistical reports are usually not very accurate. If you won’t take our word for it, do a simple experiment…install all the stat programs you can find and let them suck up your bandwidth for a few days. Go back to each stat report and you will see different results, probably in every single case.

The idea is simple…let someone else do the work and worry for you. Free yourself from statistic frenzy and concentrate instead on your content. You will be rewarded with the result.