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|| SportsShooter.com: Member Message Board
Google Analytics vs. Livebooks WebStats
Alex Witkowicz, Photographer
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Denver | Co | USA | Posted: 12:15 PM on 12.11.09 |
->> I'm a little confused with the numbers I'm getting from Google Analytics (installed on my Livebooks site) and the "WebStats" page that Livebooks uses to measure my site traffic.
Webstats says I'm getting ~10 times more traffic than Analytics does.
i.e. Google Analytics says I'm getting 5-10 visitors a day, and Webstats says I'm getting 50-100 unique visitors a day.
Any ideas? I obviously want to believe WebStats, but would like to know the truth either way. |
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Jimmy Hickey, Student/Intern, Assistant
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Seattle | WA | USA | Posted: 9:14 PM on 12.11.09 |
| ->> I've noticed this as well between the two...My thought is that webstats is counting the bots and spiders? |
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Joe Morahan, Photographer
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Denver | Co | USA | Posted: 10:47 PM on 12.11.09 |
| ->> I too have had the same issues with Livebooks & Google Analytics. Numbers are very different :/ |
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Bill Allen, Photographer
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Baltimore | MD | USA | Posted: 5:02 PM on 12.12.09 |
->> It is pretty typical for Analytics to severely undercount hits. Analytics requires the visitor's browser to send a JavaScript message (so to speak) to Google's servers in order to count the hit. There are many reasons such a message may not get sent though: the browser may not support JavaScript (i.e. a phone or a bot/spider), JavaScript may be turned off in the browser, the message may not make it all the way to Google's servers due to a network error, browser security settings may prevent JavaScript from contacting Google's servers, proxies and firewalls could block the message, etc.
Webstats only relies on the servers that are actually hosting the pages. If a page is being displayed, crawled, etc., then it has to be requested from the Livebooks servers, and requests are an easy thing to count. In other words, the counting is dependent on the server (which Livebooks controls), not the browser/bot/spider (which Livebooks does not control). |
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Kent Nishimura, Student/Intern
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Honolulu | HI | USA | Posted: 6:50 PM on 12.12.09 |
->> bill i was thinking the same thing...
as far as google ranking goes...
my graphpaperpress/wordpress powered site ranks higher than my livebooks...and i just setup the wordpress site three weeks ago...
guess when teh time comes im sticking with my wp site. |
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Ian L. Sitren, Photographer
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Palm Springs | CA | USA | Posted: 1:04 PM on 12.14.09 |
->> I was curious about this too so I asked liveBooks for an answer...
"The two stats systems work a bit differently:
AWstats, our webstats system is installed on our servers and tracks pretty much every query that comes in. This is tracking hits on source files, music that plays on the site, files in the FTP area, webgalleries, ect.
Google Analytics is a snippet of code that is replicated on all pages of the HTML site. So as a viewer navigates, GA gets pinged with every page change, homepage, contact page, every image in every portfolio, ect. GA is counting page views and navigation in a very basic sense, and does not count any other content.
To sum it up GA is probably a good representation of viewers actually on the site whereas AWstats gives you the sense of how much other traffic is accessing additional content such as FTP files, uploaded multimedia, webgalleries and much more." |
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Dinno Kovic, Photographer
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San Francisco | CA | USA | Posted: 2:13 PM on 12.14.09 |
| ->> Thanks Ian for being proactive and sharing this data. The only thing to add is that each liveBooks client gets both. |
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