I am sorry if this is the wrong section. I couldn't find a better one. My awStats and Google Analytics say 2 completely different things. I have been doing a lot of business where I need to give the stats for my site but I have no idea which version I should use. My awStats say I get 2000-4000 visits (not unique) per day. But my Google Analytics says I get 1000-2200 visits per day. The pageview and number of referrals from individual sites are way different also. Which stats should I provide when doing business?
I don't know aboiut awstats, but Google cannot know. They can only give guesstimates. Come on, think about it...how do they know how many are going into your site? They can't. Ask your hosting company if they have the capability to see how many are going into your site. Many have such a service, or they may know of one.
Normally I like to agree with you, but you're way off here. Awstats is provided (in almost all cases) BY the hosting company, and it has accurate stats for the most part. HOWEVER, Awstats counts Spiders and search engine bots as unique visitors, where Google Analytics does not. Analytics is embedded (theoretically) into every page, so it should also give a mostly accurate representation. Where google doesn't count is if an image is hotlinked, because you can't put the google code into an image alone.
I mispoke. I re-edited it quickly after proof reading it. I don't know enough about awstats, other than the fact that they do indeed count the spider bots. Does Google interact with the webmaster's hosting co.?
awstats is probably the better, as its on your server. Google Analytics is better for the source of traffic & trends.
No, you embed their code into all your pages and it reports back to the mothership every time a page is accessed. Excellent tracking but it does report much lower then hosting side programs.
I have exactly the same problem. I think AW Stats give more accurate figures (I have been using them for a while to compare).
This is why I stated that in my first post. It's somewhat good for the average 'ol Joe with his site, but if he wants to show accurate reading in the hopes of getting advertisers....or, for that matter, for peace of mind in knowing for sure.... Advertisers, like myself know that Analytics isn't that accurate and reliable. It's close, but.... I'm just saying.
Analytics does not include visits from spiders, crawlers, bots, automated referrer spammers, or humans who have JavaScript disabled. Basically, Analytics weeds out the garbage. AWstats reads your logfiles and gives you everything (bots and humans, regardless of scripting capabilities). If your advertisers are interested in your human visitors, give them the figures from Analytics. Otherwise go with AWstats.
So Google is more accurate because it only counts humans. Thanks. I will use Google when talking about my traffic from now on.
I've ran into this problem many times in the past, especially with bigger sites where the margin of error is pretty vast between Google Analytics and AWStats/Webalizer. My conclusion: AWStats is more accurate for advertising pitching purposes. Why? Well, for example, one of my sites was listed as having ~11,000 unique visits a day based on Google Analytics, while it was listed as having ~15,000 unique visits a day with AWStats. I told my advertising clients about this discrepancy in traffic, and they all decided that the 3rd party middle man (DoubleClick) ad server would decide what the proper traffic count was. Much to my belief, the ad server recorded around ~14,000 unique views per ad spot. I'm assuming the rest of the 1,000 had no JavaScript/Flash, were spiders, or did not live in an area where we had targeted campaigns activated. So, I determined that either Google Analytics is faulty at counting traffic, or that server/client side issues prevented the code from loading properly. Whatever the case, I now present my AWStats traffic count by default to potential advertisers/clients, and use Google Analytics for trends/analytical information.
I've been using Google Analytics mainly because the tools to analyze traffic are much better. It cannot know everything what server logs can (which is a shame - and I personally would be more than glad to give Analytics access on server level, rather than via Javascript). The problem with AwStat is that it's really tough to figure out what kind of traffic there is and the tools are simply poorer. Analytics is my choice, as it can give the necessary accuracy in easy-to-read format (and it cause additional server load, which some server based stats programs can do).
Has anyone else used doubeclick and found them close to google? I did a one day test and the numbers were way off but I am hoping they matchup and think it might have been a one day problem on doubleclicks end as some of the ads didn't serve properly.
I use service of statcounter.com. I thought google analytics ins not accurate on my site. I'd used on my site (vwatch.tv) . Stat from google is about 100 time difference from other stat.
For all you serious posters reading this thread...if you truly want to make a business in the Internet world, not just a lazy ammateur with some hokey pokey site as a sideline, use server logs.
I agree that analyzing server logs is valuable for several things. But if you are trying to say that it is better, when producing stats for your advertisers, to combine all of the visits and pageviews from Googlebot, Yahoo Slurp, MSNbot, Yandex, ia_archiver, etc. with visits and pageviews from humans, for the sole purpose of charging more for advertising, I think that's pretty dishonest.
Well, you can believe what you want, but the reality is that the major hitters out there, be it advertisers or Webmasters, use 'em. Even though Google Analytics is close, it isn't close enough. For the ma and pa sites, yes, it is good enough.
I have no doubt that this is true, since most businesses (and people running them) think the only way to become successful is to rip people off. I'm glad I'm not an advertiser.
AWStats is ok but uses logs to analyze and isn't real time. I always use Analytics + countall.com - this gives me exact real-time info along with batched in-depth drill downs.