Who I am
My name is Marten Koch. I have been around Minecraft servers since well before the official server list existed and I have watched the public tracker landscape turn into an ads-and-votes arms race over the last decade. MineTracker is my attempt to run the tracker I actually want to use myself: a site where the live player count is one number among several, where the history is stored long enough to tell a story, and where suspicious data is labelled instead of hidden. The contact address for legal inquiries is in the Impressum linked in the footer.
Why the site looks the way it does
Every design choice on MineTracker tries to push the reader past the single live number. The hero on the homepage shows a total, yes, but the leaderboard directly below ranks by movement and context. Every server page leads with a chart, not a rank. The trust score sits next to the player count so the two are never read in isolation. The goal is not to hide the numbers — they are right there — but to treat them as evidence, not as marketing. If a server page tells you something ambiguous, that is intentional; the alternative is confidently telling you the wrong thing.
How the data is collected
Every tracked server is polled from a small machine in Germany using the public Java or Bedrock server-list-ping protocol. Newly added and very active servers are polled every few minutes; servers that have been unreachable for weeks are polled once a week, then once a month, and eventually archived. Every successful poll is stored with a timestamp, the reported player count, the maximum, version and latency information, the MOTD and the favicon when available. Nothing that is not already publicly visible to any Minecraft client is captured. No accounts are created, no private APIs are used, and no server is asked to hand over user data.
What MineTracker is not
MineTracker is not a vote list, a promotion platform, or a ranking-for-sale site. There is no paid placement. A server's position on the leaderboard is computed from its measured player activity and nothing else; if you find something that contradicts that, write to me and I will either fix the bug or explain the calculation. The site runs ads through Google AdSense to cover the hosting bill, and those ads are clearly labelled; they do not influence what is shown or where.
How to get in touch
For anything that concerns the data — wrong server name, missing icon, an alias group that should be merged, a server you want added — the shortest path is the submission form on the homepage or an email to the address listed in the Impressum. For privacy-related questions, the Datenschutz page covers how logs and favorites are handled; anything beyond that, send a mail. Replies can take a couple of days; this is a side project, not a company, and the inbox is one person's inbox.