Google Analytics vs Awstats (Comparison)
Today I checked at my stats in Google Analytics, and also at Awstats.
The results are different, while the trend may be the same, well look at the numbers.
As you can see the number of visits to the site is 60,146, this is not unique visitors, these are total human visitors, (bots are supposed not counted), also there were 86,906 page views according to Google.
Now lets see AwStats.
Second column are the number of visits 82,472 and 155,478 page views (third column) according to AwStats.
Google report a 27% less that AwStats in visits, and why? that was my answer and after looking around for an answer I finally found that the difference is the NoScript add-on for Firefox.
And according to Analytics and AwStats Firefox is the most used browser to explore my site.
Lets see at AwStats
And now at Google Analytics
As you can see 70% of the visitors use Firefox, and according to this site NoScript is one of the most popular add-ons.
Google Analytics works because you install a java script in your site to count visits, if your visitor comes with Firefox with noscript installed that visit is not counted, and therefore Google Analytics will not report it.
But the most important thing about stats are not the absolute numbers but the trend they have, having statistics in mind it is supposed that the trend should be the same in both tools.
Also they have a lot of useful tools so it is recommended to use both of them.
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But they have different uses
But they have different uses and report different information. Awstats is a great package as it gets all its data directly from the server logs. Unfortunately, because its all generated everytime a request is made, if you have a busy site then depending on your server power it can take a few moments to parse the data.
yes indeed they have
yes indeed they have different uses, as you said AWStats is great because if has all the information, and could be great if it could ever have all the options analytics have.
On my server AWstats runs only once a day, and I can not make it run by myself, the admin of my web server make it that way to avoid charge the server.
Guillermo Garron
Also, I would not get into a
Also, I would not get into a frenzy about the FF stats, I have noticed websites that drive a lot of developers gets high FF visits, and also the developers themselves (often using FF) pushes the FF visits into the hemisphere, from visiting their websites sooooo often. If you have a look at any of your big clients (not a web development company) you will see FF visits often drop to below 10%
Good point! Hey by the way,
Good point!
Hey by the way, you site is really nice, if someone needs a webpage design you may want to look at: http://www.fluorescence.co.za/
Guillermo Garron
Well if you want to
Well if you want to eliminate the effect of your own or your developers visits to your own site, just tell the software to exclude those visits. Awstats has such an option in its configuration file, I don't know if the evil google spyware does too. As a bonus, awstats (if you run it yourself) allows you to reprocess all your historical data with new options, allowing you to check the effect of your changes on exactly the same input data.
Another often overlooked awstats feature is that awstats CAN add all the fancy cookie, screen resolution, flash enabled/disabled etc. This is done by adding a reference to
a JavaScript included in the Awstats package, and even with this enabled, you still get basic stats for the NoScript users but extra details from those who run the JavaScript.
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