ARGH! AWstats and Google Analytics, Which One is right?

[Theory5]

Ok, so I use google analytics because i like the interface and it has a ton of information. So I have been thinking that I get between 10-15 UV's a day to my site. Which I consider to be bad, but its not as bad as last month where I regularly had 0 visit days. Fortunately my site is growing.

I was on my hostgator account checking out different tools, and I glanced over at my traffic and saw that I had 40 visits yesterday. Which is weird because before I used google analytics I used wassup, and I was able to peg my bot visits at 10 a day. So I was a little bit confused. I didn't think that I got 30 bot visits in one day, so I checked the awstats page.

Turns out I had less than 10 bot visits that day on awstats. What is going on? Which one is right? Did I have 10 UV's yesterday, or 30 UV?

[Michael Silvester]

Hi Mate,

GA is not going to be 100% because its hosted on
another server and relies on loading a tracking
script that is not on your own server.

Any tracking script that is not on your own server
is not going to be as accurate.

Awstats etc is on your server, the same server as
your website so is going to be more accurate.

I have been using Piwik - Web analytics - Open source

Its a tracking script that is like GA, but its hosted
on your own server, and I have been really happy
with the results.

Hope that helps?

Take Care,

Michael Silvester

[east_coast_alex]

I don't think there is going to be any web analytics software that's going to be 100% accurate. If you have five different packages, they will probably give you five different sets of numbers for the same site. The key thing, as with any metrics, is that you pay attention to the relative changes.

I just started using Piwik myself. Just installed it for one of my WordPress sites a few days ago. It has a lot of nice features including real-time traffic updates, which you don't get with Google Analytics. It's relatively easy to install. Took me about an hour. Could do it in 10-15 minutes now.

[dburk]

Hi Theory5,

They are both accurate. They are both inaccurate. I realize that may seem contradictory, so please allow me explain.

Each of those use different methods of measuring traffic, more importantly, they are measuring different metrics. They are both accurate at measuring what they measure, however neither metric is completely accurate for determining the real traffic to your website.

AWstats uses the server logs to generate reports, while Google analytics uses client-side scripting to report activity.

Server logs are not completely accurate at measuring traffic due to caching by browsers, proxy servers and cache servers. Much activity occurs without making requests to servers and you will never have that data in your server logs.

Client-side scripting solves the issues caused by caching, however script can be disable on the web browser so it isn't completely accurate either.

The bottom line is that it is completely normal for those two different technologies to have different statistics. By using both you get a clearer picture of what is really going on.

[jazbo]

Look at trends, not specifics, otherwise you will go insane and miss the point.

[SuccessForFree]

Originally Posted by dburk

The bottom line is that it is completely normal for those two different technologies to have different statistics. By using both you get a clearer picture of what is really going on.

Thanks for clearing that up. I had noticed the differences between GA and AW, but was never quite sure how and why!