Recently it seems that those wonderful individuals who take the time to make plugins for WordPress (and even Blogger) must be on summer vacation (or skiing if it’s winter where you live). Whatever the reason, I’ve had a heck of a time finding a plugin (other than WordPress’ own – which is third party and not at all accurate if you self-host).

But today I’m making the rounds of the blogs in the network, updating each with the latest, working one called SlimStat.

A simple but powerful real-time web analytics plugin for WordPress. It doesn’t require any subscription to external statistic services: all metrics are kept on your local server, private and accessible to your eyes only. Features the famous one-click install-and-go. Results are shown in real-time! (Description courtesy of WordPress)

It’s new, so I’ll have to see how long it lasts. But it’s “light weight” and even if you haven’t gone to the 3.0 level yet (we haven’t and for a reason), it works like a charm.

So if you’re a stats nut, and really want to know who, what, where, when and how, give it a whirl

Hopefully you are running some statistical accounting method on your website and/or blog like Google Analytics. By tracking the information in and out of your site, you will also be made aware of pages that either got lost in the shuffle, were eliminated completely but still referenced elsewhere on your site (that you forgot to remove the link to), or pages seach engines like Google (for reasons unknown) expect to be there, but aren’t.

These are known as your 404 page errors, and letting them pile up can be a time consuming task to set straight and (potentially) hurt your standings.

Mostly they are just a pain in the neck to get search engines like Google to stop seeing. In fact, years ago on a completely different hosting server, I did use the cgi-bin (we don’t now). And, even though the hosting had changed numerous times, those cgi-bin 404 errors kept haunting me. So when I saw a recent incoming newsletter about this problem, I figured it’s a good time to give everyone either a heads up or reminder to track these down and eliminate them.

In fact, Mary Peng of Web Analytics World has recently put out an article on how to make the most of those inevitable 404 errors. She writes:

No matter what type of site you may have, 404 errors may cost you something. It might not be money, but it’s costing you something. Retail sites could be losing money. Other types of sites, however, may be losing something just as valuable… pageviews… return visitors… things like that….

The truth is, your site could potentially do that extra 10-25%, you just don’t benefit from it because your visitors are encountering 404 page not found errors. These visitors can be potential browsers and buyers, but once they hit that 404 page, they’ll leave and bring their money to another site.

Within her article, she also suggests another resource that gives you some great suggestions on how to fix up your 404 errors.

You’ll also discover some very interesting and creative ways you can make those dreaded 404 errors more entertaining. Here are more cool ways web owners have created their 404 pages.

So don’t wait too long. Do stay on top of these “lost pages.” Put them to valuable use and never lose another visitor to your site again.

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