Google Analytics
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- HAYZ1LLLA
I'm after a bit of advice please.
In your experience have you noticed inconsistency in Web stats by google analytics and your host/ecommerce stats? I don't know what to trust. Or a way of testing for real.I've been using GA for years but have only just realised what the host stats say.
GA is giving me over a third less hits/visitors than say 1&1 tell me. GA says yesterday that 25 people visited my site. 1&1 says 68.
Any ideas?
- jetSkii0
did u exclude yourself from the reports in ga?
- Horp0
I have noticed that a massive range of results for any given day can be reported depending on which stats service you consult...
Seems fairly conclusive to me that there are no definitive stats that can be relied upon as accurate for this kind of thing.
- phatwrx0
unique visitors -vs- returning visitors maybe?
- HAYZ1LLLA0
I'm thinking maybe, my 1&1 and Estores stats probably include the search engine robots that crawl the site. And GA doesn't?
- HAYZ1LLLA0
Some possible answers...
-file caching: if a returning visitor has file caching enabled on his web browser (usually it is the case) the request for the file he already viewed will not be sent to the web server, and he will view a local copy, so awstat will not detect multiple visits some times.
- Page tagging relies on the client (visitor) browser voluntarily providing the analytical information requested. Some browsers disable so me data collection for security reasons.
- Spiders and bots cannot execute google analytics code -- this alone excludes a lot of traffic especially if you have Adsense on your pages.
- Google analytics script sets a persistent cookie to track user's navigation and visits regardless of the IP address -- this is not possible by digging the server logs alone.
- Log spam would show up in your logs but not run the analytics JS.
- People with certain security products may have the JS stripped out of the page and therefore not run it. Especially if they are non-techy and just accept whatever the defaults are.
- Copyright checking bots would show up in your logs but not run the analytics JS. Some of these do their dubious best to pass as a normal user as well.
- utopian0
I have not check my Google Analytic stats in about 2 years...
- HAYZ1LLLA0
^ Cause it's bad? Or cause you just don't give a fook?
I'm not so bothered about my own site, or have a general curiosity.It's when I'm telling clients that 400 people visited your site after our campaign. When it could have in fact been 1,600! makes me want to cry if GA turns out to be shite.
- freshdude0
Does 1&1 tell you location or just visitor numbers?
- abettertomorrow0
The difference lies in the criteria the software uses for determining what is a "real" user. Any site is constantly being visited by spiders, i.e. search engines, spammers, etc. This traffic might even exceed real users in some cases.
Although the details vary, your garden variety server-based stats software tends not to filter these out as well. For that reason, I would trust Google Analytics over the server stats as a general rule, since they tend to be more strict with the filtering and capture only actual people.
- abettertomorrow0
That 1/3 difference, BTW, matches up pretty perfectly with what I've experienced. Trust Google over 1 and 1 for sure.
- chilamont0
- lol - GA is totally adequate for most sites. And server side logs are useless if they don't filter bots.abettertomorrow
- probably not feasible for you, but systems like this can give you much more granular data on your processes.chilamont
- depends on how you configure your system Server logs are used by plenty of decent analytics groups.chilamont
- ex: http://www.unica.com…chilamont
- sure, if you're talking a decent sized company or something, but not a personal siteabettertomorrow
- I will agree that GA should work for you if you aren't trying to analyze too much. The process that I showed..chilamont
- is for sites that get tons of traffic.chilamont
- by tons I mean 100,000's of hits per day +chilamont
- Right, fair enoughabettertomorrow
- pauliusuza0
Try http://woopra.com, it also has realtime stat monitoring, very useful to track how your users navigate in your site.
- HAYZ1LLLA0
Thanks Chilamont. I thought you were a troll!
The sites I make and use GA for, only only get between 70 - 500 hits a day. So nothing massive but it would be nice to be accurate. Especially as some of the differences are 1 - 78 hits a day. If I did a massive site it would mean the difference between 1,000 - 78,000 hits which would obviously be bad.I suppose I could use the difference to my advantage.
Depending on if I wanted high traffic or high conversion rates.I'm dubious about 1&1 stats as there is no accountability of the visits.
GA gives me traffic sources/nationalities/browser etc. So the visitors have profiles. 1&1 are just like... "You got X hits, honest"- it never hurts to compare and contrast data sets from various sources. I read you. :)chilamont
- Gordy220
I'm sure you're aware but years ago I got hit by something similar.
Its not a Hits vs. Visitors mix up - with GA showing you site visits and 1&1 giving you hits?
- It's bots and visitors vs only visitorsabettertomorrow
- Sorry - yeah, just read that above
Gordy22 - yeschilamont
- CanHasQBN0
does anybody here using GA get a lot of hits from Kazan, Russia? I get them every day. it's really odd.
- chilamont0
I get craploads from Kiev, Ukraine and other various parts of Russia. LOL, but I suppose that's natural, depending on what your peddling off
- chilamont0
BTW, i hope that you are filtering yourself as well. You can't count your own views. hahah, I'm guessing you know that
:)