i used both. like awstats better than google. But Google analystic have many tools to help you out. also in the google help pages. i read somewhere : it will not count the same COOKIE / IP if you visit the page again within 30 minutes without closing the browser / tab. ,etc it means only Real Visitors. not hits.. awstats includes the search engine robots hits ,etc Thanks.
Awstats is just visits, uniques, pageviews, countries, keywords, time on site, browser, resolution, I can list the features in a short list. Analytics has a ton of way to manipulate the same data and offers insane amounts of conversion data and bounce rate information for each page, keyword, ad campaign. No comparison. Analytics runs circles around awstats.
I use both equally, but if it came down to accuracy I would plump for analytics. I've notice some strange, abnormal data on awstats recently and which has not been included in analytics.
I personally prefer AWStats or other scripts that analyse the server access logs. In my experience, the JavaScript used by Google Analytics tends to slow down the loading of the page sometimes (the server it loads from seems slow at times). But indeed, Analytics shows a lot more statistical information. AWstats can include statistics about images (bandwidth used, etc) that Google Analytics won't be able to do.
in google analytics you see only visiors with installed JavaScript - that is why there are differences in number of visitors in awstats and google analytics
I prefer AwStats' speed and simplicity, GA has the nice feature 'compare to past' though. Oh yeah, my AwStats is modded to output daily/monthly/yearly stats and also in real time.