Aug 21 2007

How accurate is Google Analytics?

Published by Max Mint at 12:34 am

For the Maxmint.com weblog I am using 2 types of analytics software. One is Google Analytics 2.0 and the other is Statcounter. Both are free and not visible what I actually really like, plus they have a couple of very nice options so I can monitor who and why people are visiting me. Always nice to know eah :-)

Yesterday I also started a niche website, posted some articles on it and also put up both analytics scripts in the template. After plugging that website to some Social Bookmarking sites, it even got visitors. All very great. But now comes the weird part, those visitors aren’t visible in Google Analytics. Statcounter is the only one who has seen them. I even double checked if the visitors on that site wasn’t me. Now I know that that this niche website isn’t crawled by Google yet, but that shouldn’t be a problem at all. Analytics is receiving data.

Google Analytics 0 VisitorsWhy am I mentioning this? I just came across a post on the Seer Interactive Seo Blog where Wil Reynolds is stating that Google Analytics will dominate the analytics space. I have to agree that Google has a very big potential to take out the competition in the analytics market, I still wouldn’t be betting on one horse though. I want accurate data! If one counter says 10 visitors and the other stated 12, ok I can live with that. But if one says 1200 visitors and the other 1000, then something is wrong. What guarantee do you have if these statistics are accurate?

Statcounter showing 29 visitorsThen after reading Wil’s post, I came across a comment in the post Wil is referring to, where Rob Saker also states after comparing raw log files against Google Analytics and WebTrends, Google Analytics is underreporting traffic. But ehh Rob, even a hobby site wants good data and not some lottery numbers.

Questions:

  1. How many of you are betting on one horse?
  2. Are you using one or more analytic scripts for your website and do you compare them?
  3. Why does Google Analytics not give out the correct statistics?

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2 Comments

  1. MyAvatars 0.2
  2. sitefever on 05.09.2007 at 07:27 (Reply)

    I recently conducted a small observation of AwStats vs. Google Analytics: http://sitefever.com/awstats-vs-google-analytics/

    I also started using StatCounter, and so far I have found that to be the most accurate.

  3. MyAvatars 0.2
  4. Mo on 01.04.2008 at 21:55 (Reply)

    Hi,

    I’m using WebLog Expert, Awstats and Google - each report something different! This gets very confusing.

    Have you ever compared WebLog expert to other packages out there?

    Problem is that Weblog Expert claims 12,000 visitors in month A, where as Awstats says 6,000 and Google says 1,200 ?!?! What gives?

    Any info or insight you can provide is appreciated!

    Regards,

    Mo

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