Awstats vs Analytics

[baldidiot]

I've noticed that my server logs (awstats through cpanel) show a lot more traffic than google analytics. Does analytics just not track everybody, or is awstats showing a bunch of bots?

[les]

We have the same statistics differences. And I believe that Awstats is more accurate, because analytics can count visits only as long as javascript is enabled.

[baldidiot]

We have the same statistics differences. And I believe that Awstats is more accurate, because analytics can count visits only as long as javascript is enabled.

That's a good point, thanks. Do that many people really not have js enabled though?

[casinogod]

google analytics will only count 'hits' to pages where you have the urchin.

Whilst awstats will count all hits. So if you have a page that loads another page in an iframe within it then awstats would count a hit to each page, whilst I presume you woudl only have your google analytics urchin on the one page so it woudl only count 1.

awstats can also count image hits so if people hotlink your images and your not preventing that that could also inflat your hit data.

Also in theory if you put the google code at the base of the source code (as I think most people do) and someone clicks away from the page before it is fully loaded, then google will not count that becuse the google code has not loaded but awstats would know about and thus count that hit as the server will have logged it as soon as the page starts to load it doesnt need to finished loading.

In honesty I dont think it matters too much which you use, we use awstats on some sites, and google anylitics on others. You should be using them more to view the trend than worry to much about exact figures, if you want to compare one of you sites to another then you should really use the same trackign system to get a like for like comparison. But if you just have the one site to worry about then it makes no difference.

Hope that makes sense and helps.

[les]

According to 2006-2007 statistics in US: 3.05% had it disabled. I assume that the percent is bigger now, because people are more educated on the subject. But I don't have the exact statistics, only theories.

[baldidiot]

Thanks guys!

[Gokke]

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[BadRiver4Me]

If you are willing to pay some extra getclicky is a good alternative .

[EugeneK]

Google Analytics is more accurate as Awstats counts bots - each day you have plenty of them.

[vmlinuz]

You can even get very different results when you use two server based stat programs like Awstats and Webalizer so I agree with Andy that you should focus on the trends and not the actual numbers.

They count some stats differently. I used all three of these, now I use Analytics only. casinogod is right on the point that if the user clicks away too fast, Analytics won't be able to record it. In theory it uses async tracking but event that needs a bit of loading time.

There was one thing I really liked in AWstats: the simple and fast user interface.