internet - How do you measure your traffic?
The issue comes up here every now and then, because the matter continues to confuse me. I mostly use Awstats to analyze the traffic to this weblog and was pretty happy with it, probably because I did not know better.
When Google started its tracking service Google Analytics I used it for some time but kicked it off, since it did not seem to cover big parts of the world. For example Hong Kong did not emerge at all, while I would expect some traffic from that part of China.
Google is now pulling its services together an suddenly Google Analytics showed up at my radar screen again. I decided to have another go, and this time at least Hong Kong is on board.
Both services come up with pretty different results and that might explain their vast differences. Awstats works at the server of my provider and analyzes the raw data. Google Analytics wants you to put a little script on your weblog and uses that to get information. That might explain why Google Analytics misses much traffic: the script is only on my front page and not in the archives. It claims that most of my visitors come through my front door. Awstats sees that most of my traffic comes indirect through my archives, probably by people who find me through search engines.
The trends they show are also very different: Awstats shows that an overwhelming majority of my readers comes from the US. Google Analytics says that China is the clear winner, over the US. At this stage I believe that Awstats is still the best, although they might count some traffic double as people renew the website. Google Analytics looks better, but seems to miss most of my traffic.
How do you keep an eye on your traffic?
1 comment:
Google Analytics is very good - the only thing you have to do, is to copy the script to your blogger template (as suggested by google - somewhere above the ending body tag). Obviously, if you have the script on your main page only, your going to see inadequate stats (usually visitors entering through subpages make up to 60-70% of all visitors). I encourage you to give google analytics a second go - it's really good.
By the way - you have to tell apart visits and page views.
The server stats usually list page views, and those include refreshing pages; google analytics gives info esp. about unique visits.
If your interested - you can try out www.sitemeter.com (it's quite good), then there's www.statcounter.com, www.cqcounter.com and extremetracking.com (the last one is the least useful).
Best wishes,
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