I recently put statcounter on my blog. It is amazing with up to the minute results. Anyway, do you guys recommend allowing your stats open to anybody who comes through to your blog/site? Right now it is open to everyone to see. Would you say its a bad thing to do this because my competition could use this to their advantage
I feel that showing your traffic to your competitors is not a good idea. Your competitors can easily back track your marketing activities using your stats. So I would never recommend you to show your traffic stats openly.
I doubt competitors can really get a big advantage over the keyword analysis on how your site gets the traffic. Possibly it will only make them green with envy each like they look at your stats. Besides by having open stats you tend to gain trust for direct banner selling. So no harm from my view to make the stats public.