Inconsisent traffic data

Submitted by RyanJohnson on Mon, 12/20/2010 - 22:50

Hi,

I have noticed major differences of traffic data between AWstats, Webalizer and Google Analytics

On a particular day the following statistics were reported between each:

Awstats visits: 929

Webalizer visits: 1129

Webalizer sites: 984

Google analytics unique visitors: 341

There's obviously quite a bit of variation in these figures. Which one is correct? Can anyone explain why this is happening?

Ta.

Ryan

Status: 
Active

Comments

Submitted by JamieCameron on Tue, 12/21/2010 - 00:31

All those different tools count "visits" in their own way. Also, google analytics is based on the browser reporting a hit to google, while awstats and webalizer are based on processing of web logs. The only two that I would expect to always agree are awstats hits and webalizer hits, as these include all pages and images.

Submitted by RyanJohnson on Sun, 01/09/2011 - 20:07

Thanks Jamie,

I want to come back to my client with a clear reason. So unique visitors shouldn't be similar in Google Analytics as "browser stats" include only visitors that have JavaScript enabled? Would this be the main reason for variation? This would exclude bots as well?

Thanks. Ryan

Submitted by JamieCameron on Sun, 01/09/2011 - 20:15

Yes, that would explain part of the difference - browsers without javascript and bots won't trigger analytics hits at all. Also, it is possible for a page to be cached in the browser so that the second visit does not generate a hit on the web server, but still triggers a call to google analytics.