Has anyone here used Google Analytics to track traffic to their website? I use it for about 3 or 4 sites, but I have noticed some inconsistencies with stats from Webalyzer, and even with Google AdSense as far as page impressions. I am still pretty new with Google Analytics, but can anyone provide some insight on their experiences with it? I have to say that Google Analytics, as a piece of online software is fantastic and really gives multiple views of site traffic patterns. I just am not 100% sure about how accurate they are. I have a client now that uses Google Analytics to track traffic on her site and she says it's hugely inaccurate as well. Any thoughts?
Be sure that you have Google Analytics code in all of your website pages. I think this what makes the difference in your case.
I use it and while it displays them greatly and tracks very useful statistics, I must say there are always differences between its results and my own results.
Webalyzer is more likely to be inaccurate then Analytics. Infact Webalyzer is very inaccurate when it comes to page impressions as it normally as far as I know also counts robot traffic.
This article might be very interesting: http://www.stonetemple.com/articles/analytics-report-august-2007.shtml There are myriad factors that can change how visitors are counted (including things like where tracking codes are placed) Basically - most analytic programs have their flaws - it is just a matter of seeing them in a relative sense - i.e. a 20% increase in traffic should be accurate in relative terms (but may not reflect absolute numbers) Dylan
We are currently using Google Analytics as well. We do see difference between adwords, adsense, cj.com, and awstats. Not a big fan of webalizer though. I do believe its a horrible stats counter. I would double check each page though and take the results from webalizer into consideration that it counts all port 80 traffic not just pages viewed. You should take more heavily google's stats then your own stats programs though because of how it tracks. Best of luck.
I combine statcounter with Analytics. It works pretty good. I always think you should have a backup tracker. It's not hard to see that one of the trackers misses information every now and again, but it still give sme a clear picture of where my traffic is coming from.
I have found over the years that here is always a margin of error with these statistical programs. I've used Webalyzer and don't trust it much. It DOES count robot traffic, which can inflate numbers dramatically. I've also used awstats, Web Log Expert, Web Trends, and now Google Analytics. I have seen the best success with Web Log Expert and Web Trends. I hate to say it but you get what you pay for with traffic analytics. Web Log Expert is great and easy to use and understand. Web Trends is extremely sophisticated and focused towards high-level marketing people. I have confidence that Google Analytics will improve over time though. I will also try placing my code in different areas, other than where Google tells me to. I usually just run at least 2 analytics softwares and compare and average out traffic.