As one of the people who objects to unneccessary cookies being insinuated onto my computer, I try my best to get rid of ones I don't want. As I use Opera that usually just means selecting eiter "refuse cookie" or "Accept cookie, but throw it away on close of browser", but it is a pain in the rear when I hit one of the sites which try to set over a dozen cookies for each page within the site.
That said, if I visit such a web counter, I will have deleted the previous cookie, so it will presumably register me as a different "new" visitor.
The point being that it will give duff information anyway.
I particularly object to the counters which set "tracking cookies",although Ad-Aware is quite good at removing any of these which slip through on Internet Explorere.
Quack!
GtD.