Hello All, I have a very basic question. How accurate is Google Analytics? The reason I ask is because when I started my website, it seemed like every time I was working on my website, the search volume would also increase. I would expect the direct traffic to soar, but not the searches from Google as well. For instance let me give an example: This pattern continued for about a month, so I am wondering if this is just an amazing coincidence, or my traffic from my computer (which is all direct) is getting mis-categorized to Search Engine Traffic from search engines. Any suggestions guys? Thanks, Nick
I highly recommend filtering out your IP from analytics to ensure the stat program is not counting your visits as traffic. On the analytic settings, on the bottom right click "filter manager", you can then add your IP to filter out your visits to your domain.
than just keep track of the times you visit each day and get the traffic up so ur 10 hits a day wont matter
You can filter yourself out of GA by using cookies...try this: http://www.google.com/support/googleanalytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=55481 Answer is about halfway down the article...
Using so many of Googles analytics tools I've come to realise that you need to take the results with a pinch of salt. They are often largely exaggerated.
To exclude traffic from dynamic IP addresses, you can use a JavaScript function to set a cookie on your internal computers. You'll then be able to filter all visitors with this cookies from appearing on your Analytics reports. How to exclude traffic by cookie: 1. Create a new page on your domain, containing the following code: <body onLoad="javascriptageTracker._setVar('test_value');"> (Please note that this code is in addition to the Google Analytics tracking code that you have on every page of your website.) 2. In order to set the cookie, visit your newly created page from all computers that you would like to exclude from your reports. 3. Create an Exclude filter to remove data from visitors with this cookie.
i have noticed my results to jump about sometimes with visitors being revised on a couple of occasions. still i compare to my web traffic monitor and i think that is the more accurate.
I am confident in the accuracy of Google Analytics. Make sure you are aware of the difference between visitors and unique visitors - the reports page will default to visitors, which is often a very different number to 'unique visitors'.
Because awstats will report every bot that hits your server. GA reports on pageviews, someone has to have called up the pixel in the code on the page to be recorded. It's a more accurate representation of human visitors.
But Still it is the best free analytics tool available in market...No other tool refine data so accurately..
Check also if analytics is properly installed on your site.View the source code of each page URL if the analytics code is installed.
And an additional point to add, add the code in your header or footer so that it stays on all pages rather than adding it in your home page alone!
Depends on your network setup...Some ips are static, some are dynamic. But you can block google analytics with cookies. Read this: http://www.google.com/support/google...n&answer=55481