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Stats - a constant annoyance

by lucasbowen
7 replies
  • SEO
    • |
Need your help guys n gals! I find it so annoying that whichever stat platform I use I get a different answer re unique visitors, pageviews etc.

I run a few sits in WP hosted on Hostgator. For all I use Jetpack. Checking JP I get one result. Seems accurate. Comparing to Google Analytics, GA is roughly 25% less than JP and then when checking with HG (who claims their stats are spot on an accurate) I get numbers 5-6 times what I see in Jetpack.

So let's have it - what do you rely on?

I know it doesn't really matter that much but at the end of the day, it's nice to know what your reader volume is and what CTR % comes to etc. Plus, who knows, one day perhaps a site needs flipping :-)

Cheers,
#annoyance #constant #stats
  • Profile picture of the author kaytav
    I would suggest you to go with Analytics. It is really the best. Checking with soo many tools will only confuse you. Try to use just 1 tool.
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  • Profile picture of the author trevord92
    Strictly speaking, Hostgator are telling you the truth. The log files (especially the raw ones that you can download) track everything.

    But that means they include robot visits as well as humans.

    Analytics does its best to narrow it down to humans but because it's Javascript based and typically at the end of the page, it won't capture everyone. Especially if they click the back button fast.

    Unique visitors depends on the time period - today, this week, this month, this year, forever? And may get fooled by shared IP addresses (the ones where you're given a new IP address each time you log on).

    And of course if you're really fussy, remember that many internet providers set their users up to use a cache so that popular files are delivered via the ISP to save bandwidth but that does mean your host's log file won't know anything about those "visits".

    "How to Lie with Statistics" is a fun read if you really want to get distracted on this!
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    • Profile picture of the author yukon
      Banned
      Originally Posted by trevord92 View Post

      Strictly speaking, Hostgator are telling you the truth. The log files (especially the raw ones that you can download) track everything.

      But that means they include robot visits as well as humans.
      Exactly this.
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  • Profile picture of the author UMS
    That's often the reason people will show you their awstats reports when they want to impress people with the amount of traffic they receive rather than their GA (or similar) stats.

    Robots/Spiders can account for a sizeable percentage of total traffic.
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  • Profile picture of the author raajtram
    Only two words - Google Analytics.
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  • Profile picture of the author lucasbowen
    @ all - thank you so much for quick and swift feedback, comments and suggestions! Exactly what I hoped for.
    Cheers,
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    Life is too short to be anything but happy

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