Different Stats

[Trevor]

I've got a Wordpress website, which is hosted on Hostgator. When I login into my Hostgator account and view the Awstats statistics for the site, the numbers are different than what I get in Google Analytics. For example, the number of UVs yesterday is almost 4 times higher in Awstats than in Analytics.

How come this is so? And which stats should I trust?

Thanks!

[dburk]

Hi Tekamolo,

Those two analytic programs track different things in different ways, you should trust both. You just need to understand the difference in what is being tracked by those programs.

Unique visits isn't the same as unique visitors. One unique visitor could have dozens of unique visits. A "visit" is a session and a "visitor" is a user that could have many independent visits.

One program tracks all visits, including visits by robot programs, and the other program track unique visitors and excludes visits by bots. Those are two different metrics and the numbers should be different.

[coolmoss]

There is a WP plug-in called slimstat, that gives lots of stats similar to analytics, worth a go!

[Trevor]

Originally Posted by dburk

Hi Tekamolo,

Those two analytic programs track different things in different ways, you should trust both. You just need to understand the difference in what is being tracked by those programs.

Unique visits isn't the same as unique visitors. One unique visitor could have dozens of unique visits. A "visit" is a session and a "visitor" is a user that could have many independent visits.

One program tracks all visits, including visits by robot programs, and the other program track unique visitors and excludes visits by bots. Those are two different metrics and the numbers should be different.

What's the difference between a unique visit and a visit then?

[nicktyler]

Visit is the total amount of times anybody comes to your site if one person visits more than once they only get 1 hit as a unique visitor. The UV is lower.

[nathanielf]

I get quite some hits from GoogleBot, Baidu spider, Yahoo crawler,... if I check my log in my Visitors module (Drupal module but WP probably has something similar). I think these hits are calculated in Hostgator Awstats but not in Google Analytics.

[steveseo]

Hostgator Stats also count Google spider, Yahoo crawler visits.. i guess this is something which confusing you..!

[dburk]

Originally Posted by Tekamolo

What's the difference between a unique visit and a visit then?

Hi Tekamolo,

In the IT world there are technical terms that define certain metrics. One of those terms is used for defining a browser session on a web server. Since the term "session" isn't well understood by users outside of the industry, analytic packages often go with a "user friendly" term of "unique visits".

Technically, the term "visit" might refer to a session, or it may refer to a page view. It typically depends on the context in which the term is used. If it is in relation to an individual page then it usually refers to a page view and when referring to site wide stats it usually refers to a web browser session. You must refer to the documentation provided by your analytic package for clarification.

[Trevor]

Originally Posted by dburk

Hi Tekamolo,

In the IT world there are technical terms that define certain metrics. One of those terms is used for defining a browser session on a web server. Since the term "session" isn't well understood by users outside of the industry, analytic packages often go with a "user friendly" term of "unique visits".

Technically, the term "visit" might refer to a session, or it may refer to a page view. It typically depends on the context in which the term is used. If it is in relation to an individual page then it usually refers to a page view and when referring to site wide stats it usually refers to a web browser session. You must refer to the documentation provided by your analytic package for clarification.

Thank you for your clarification. However, when I compare numbers that from definition refer to the same thing (for example the number of "Unique visitors" in Awstats and the number of "Absolute unique visitors" in G Analytics), they still differ...

Any further suggestions?

[ProvenViral]

Google analytics is a more in-depth search whileas awstats will record every hit and everything that touches your website even fake bots and visitors.

[dburk]

Originally Posted by Tekamolo

Thank you for your clarification. However, when I compare numbers that from definition refer to the same thing (for example the number of "Unique visitors" in Awstats and the number of "Absolute unique visitors" in G Analytics), they still differ...

Any further suggestions?

They will rarely match because they are measuring using different technologies. Awstats pulls data from the server logs and therefor cannot detect pages viewed from cache servers or client-side caching. GA uses client side scripts which cannot detect activity from bots and browsers that have disabled scripting.

Server stats will tend to over-report visitors and client side scripting will tend to under report visitors by a small percentage on average. So, the GA numbers are probably closer to the real number but may miss a small percentage.

[Trevor]

Hey there,
so I checked my stats today in G Analytics and Awstats, and what is weird is the two stats differ PRETTY DRASTICALLY, I mean, it shows I got 23 visits on July 8th in G Analytics, whereas 88 in Awstats. How's that?

[dburk]

Originally Posted by Tekamolo

Hey there,
so I checked my stats today in G Analytics and Awstats, and what is weird is the two stats differ PRETTY DRASTICALLY, I mean, it shows I got 23 visits on July 8th in G Analytics, whereas 88 in Awstats. How's that?

Hi Tekamolo,

GA only recognizes visits from script enabled browsers. It is typical to see a relatively large number of bot visits in your server stats that do not register as visitors in GA.