Hai folks, i though to post this in seo forum and later thought this is the correct forum. I have google analytics as well as awstats for my site. awstat's stats are always higher than google analytics when it come to number of visitors. which one is more accurate? which one don't count bots? do google analytics counts subdomain visit even though i install theire code in home page only in the main domain (xxxs.com)?
I wouldn't compare them apples to apples. You want to look at your GA stats in aggregate. One reason your stats might be off is that your visitors might click off of a page before the GA code fires. This is true if it is at the bottom of your page.
I believe Google analytics is more accurate. Besides, I don't see a reason why you should be using both.
Google analytics = third-party javascript, never as accurate as a script running RIGHT on your server. It's like saying that Google Finance / Yahoo! Finance is more accurate than the quote pricing on the trade floor in the Wall Street Hub
Stick with viewing the AWStats and don't focus very much on the data of Google analytics -- It's more about it being a "pretty" tool, it's not exact -- Server scripts that offer real-time data like Omniture's are the most advanced. I'd rank it for accuracy: AWStats --> other server-side scripts housed on your server --> Omniture and premium real-time analytics engines --> Google Analytics
+1 for that. AWStats uses the webserver's own logs to come up with it's data while Urchin/ Google Analytics uses an off site javascript that may not load for upwards of a hundred different reasons. The webserver's logs are going to be more accurate because that's that's serving the pages.
I work in web analytics, have done for 10 years! Awstats is NOT an analytics solution, its a stats system hence the name! GA can be configured to track just about anything, massively powerful for understanding visitor to website interaction. We use both GA and Omniture depending on the client, Omniture is slow and clunky by comparison to GA. Its undoubtedly powerful but a pig to use.. The key is understanding that Javascript based ANALYTICS solutions are not about auditing exact visitor volumes but rather they are designed for marketing people to help them understand trends and patterns. STATS systems like AwSTATS are better used by the I.T department to monitor server usage. Do yourselves a favour and read one of the Google Analytics books out there, when you understand its capabilitys it can help you transform the performance of a site, something Awstats never will..