You can find a number of useful statistical applications on the net that provides graphical statistics regarding your website. Using these are quite helpful regarding your website and blog as you can view important statistics such as where your visitors came from, which pages were viewed, length of visit, unique or returning users, setup goals etc.
Some of them are free (Google Analytics) and with others there’s a fee involved (Stuffedtracker). One of the most known ones is Google Analytics. The name says it all.
After using Google Analytics for a couple of years together with other stats applications , I have noticed that Google Analytics generally reports the lowest number of visitor traffic.
Do you think it’s because Google Analytics is correct and the other statistic applications are wrong? Maybe Google Analytics is just missing some traffic?
You will find that there are two types of web analytics available today and these are called Log file analysis and Page tagging.
Log File Analysis
Log file analysis applications such as Awstats and Webalizer records everything about the server (your website) visitors. The log files are on the server and all the data is logged no matter what settings or browser your visitors are using.
Page Tagging
These are third-party online applications which involves the placement of a snippet code directly onto the page you would like to track and analyze. There are many available and popular ones are Google Analytics, Statcounter and Stuffedtracker. These applications work with a snippet of code you place on the selected page you would like to track and they are usually written in Javascript.
So why does Google Analytics report inaccurately?
Well the most common one I can think of is – If the user has Javascript code disabled in their browser, Google Analytics won’t report anything because it works with a snippet of Javascript code placed in your pages. It is estimated that 7-10% of internet users have Javascript turned off in their browser. Well this could be a problem for some, It’s not with me as the other stats applications I use also work with Javascript code snippets.
The true measure of visitor traffic is generally somewhere in the middle and is more than what Google Analytics reports and less than what the other web analytics reports. Use your analytics to measure trends and understand that the actual number of visitors may be somewhat different.
What’s your experience with Google Analytics or any other third-party applications?
“The true measure of visitor traffic is generally somewhere in the middle”
You couldn’t be more right. That’s why we’ve developed a “middle-way” log analyzer, Web Log Storming (http://www.weblogstorming.com/). It allows you to browse through stats and drill down into smallest details to check the accuracy. There’s also few articles on the website that you might find interesting.
Thanks for the link Vladimir
I’ve used several different analytics programs including GA, Web Trends, Coremetrics, and Unica’s NetInsight. I think that too many people attempt to take analytics at face value and that’s where they are making their mistake. You’ll never find a program that offers everything you need and counts each and every visitor as you need it to (ie. not counting bots as humans, not including spammers at all, etc.). You said it right when you said “Use your analytics to measure trends and understand that the actual number of visitors may be somewhat different.” I’ve been saying that for years and no one seems to listen. Great post!
Thanks Jessica
Hi Anton,
I agree with you about the JavaScript snippet, it could be very likely the case, and I just to be safe rely also on cpanel stats!
Hmmm. I’d never even considered the possibility of analytics being inaccurate, though I have noticed minor discrepancies at times. Thanks for your thoughts! Ultimately as you mentioned, analytics is primarily about trends, and not meant to be the definitive word on your visits…
Anton, you’re so right about the two different types of tracking. Some really big services like Omniture provide a hybrid tracking method. Also, if I remember correctly, it was about 2 months ago that Google offered people the option to opt out of Analytics tracking altogether. At the time only a handful of users signed up but many of them are tech saavy users that you might really want to target depending on your niche.
I’ve been using Google Analytics on my day job for a site that gets a huge amount of traffic internationally. I think the biggest disappointment with using GA or any tracking service is seeing your bounce rate and finding out that lots of people visit your site “by accident”. By that I mean, for all of the hard work we put into our blogs and sites to attract the right kind of visitor and give them what they need, it’s still sad to see that some people have no interest in your site what so ever!
So when you see your bounce rate, just blame it on Google for not giving people what they really want.
Anton, many thanks for that. I’ve been sitting here scratching my head for ages wondering why there were these discrepancies between GA and AWstats. I have given up on Webalyser as its readings were too far the other way, feeding me back stats that I thought were unrealistic. AWstats seemed to strike a middle ground that I thought was realistic.
Awstats will be better than most 3rd party analyzer scripts as it is server based.
I always thought Google Analytics was tracking low so I appreciate the confirmation!
Interesting, Anton, and reminds me of the period when pocket calculators were reported as inaccurate. How were we to know/! I do see a difference in WordPress JetPack statistics (lower) compared to Google Analytics. Gee, maybe both are low and my blog is wildly popular!