Hi all I've got google analytics setup on my site, it seems to be fairly accurate in general however I've recently had someone wanting to exchange links with me. We're both in the same industry so it seems like a reasonable request. However when I scan through the logs I get about 1200 hits from them over the past couple of days. Over the same period in google I don't show an increase or decrease in my usual traffic and it says I've received 13 hits of them. Could this be an issue with analytics (though my stats are as I would expect without this other site) or could this other site be sending me fake traffic that google has picked up on? The 1200 hits I see in the logs all come from different referrers within the site, different IP address etc. Any thoughts?
Sorry but I'm a dumbass. When I check my logs for links I do it on the command line, just for interests sake, not for real results. It's usually quite accurate but I made a mistake and was including the banner they had hotlinked from my site. So, google analytics was correct and because they have my banner on almost every page I can actually see what sort of traffic they get. 4 days, 811 unique hits, 1200 total. Not spectacular.
Although you find the problem in this case which is good. Something else to consider (which doesnt directly apply to your case), but google analytics works by including a remote javascript file to log x y and z, its easy for me to hit up your website with 1000s of hits from a few ips using the other websites refer and your left wondering why analytics does not show it - some browsers do not support javascript! Most of these you dont want around