Concerned about inconsistencies...

[mishimasan]

OK so I couldn't find the appropriate place to post this so please help if u can:

http://www.thewayofmoney.com

I've got analytics and cpanel installed. Cpanel has a program called Awstats which I use to check traffic trends, just like Google analytics.

However, there's a huge inconsistency in the amount of traffic that analytics picks up compared to what Awstats picks up.

For example, on a regular analytics day, we're seeing around 30 unique visits a day.

On Awstats, we're seeing around 140 unique visits a day. It's a MASSIVE difference.

Please could someone shed some light on why we are seeing such different numbers?

I had the site checked to see if it was optimized properly for fast page loading etc. and it's not. If someone could also tell me why that is too, then I'd very much appreciate it!

Best regards,

MishimaSan

[aj_nsc]

AWSTATS


Unique Visitor:
A unique visitor is a host that has made at least 1 hit on 1 page of your web site during the current period shown by the report. If this host make several visits during this period, it is counted only once.
The period shown by AWStats reports is by default the current month.
However if you use AWStats as a CGI you can click on the "year" link to have a report for all the year. In a such report, period is full year, so Unique Visitors are number of hosts that have made at least 1 hit on 1 page of your web site during those year.


Google Anlytics


Unique Visitors represents the number of unduplicated (counted only once) visitors to your website over the course of a specified time period. A Unique Visitor is determined using cookies.


Both methods have their disadvantages, but I would imagine that in your case, google analytics is giving you a more accurate number. If the IP address of a user changes (every time the user connects to the internet for a dial-up customer, or restars their modem for an ADSL customer, for example), then it will be recorded as a new "unique visitors" by awstats.

As far as analytics goes, the user can clear their cookies in between visits of your site and be counted as a new 'unique visitor' by google analytics.

Thus, both methods have their pitfalls, but, in your case, I'd say analytics is giving you a closer result of actual unique visitors than awstats.

[felgall]

Analytics relies on JavaScript and so the typically 6% - 10% of your visitors who don't have that will be included in the Awstats counts but will not exist as far as Analytics is concerned. Perhaps you have a higher than normal percentage of your visitors with JavaScript disabled or using browsers without JavaScript.

[mishimasan]

Thanks for that guys. Bit disappointing to hear that we're probably getting less visitors than reported, but it's good to know obviously.

[aj_nsc]

If you read felgall's post, something that I missed, he is quite probably right, and it could be that awstats is recording the more appropriate number of visitors because you are getting a higher number of JS-disabled visits.