Which stats showings are correct?
-
To Whom It May Concern,
I’m trying to figure what statistics showings are the right one. For instance, “site stats” on the dashboard of my wordpress page shows that i had 114 “views per day” on 11-26-2010. However, google analytics shows that I had 77 “visits” on 11-26-2010. To make it even more confusing, the “StatPress Overview” on my wordpress page shows that I had 273 “visitors” on 11-26-10. There’s even another showing on the same page of the “StatPress Overview” that shows I had 239 visitors on 11-26-2010, which is obviously different than the aforementioned 273.
Which of these is the most accurate stat showing? The “StatPress Overview” seems to be the most comprehensive and up-to-the-second showing, because it also lets you see at exactly what time of the day someone hit a page on my site, what browser they used and their IP address. But on this “StatPress Overview” it does not give me information like bounce rates, etc., that google analytics does.
Help!
-Chris
For the sake of hits/visits, I would obviously like someone to tell me that the “StatPress Overview” is the correct one, because
The blog I need help with is: (visible only to logged in users)
-
The blog you specified at demencha.com does not appear to be hosted at WordPress.com.
This support forum is for blogs hosted at WordPress.com. If your question is about a self-hosted WordPress blog then you’ll find help at the WordPress.org forums.
If you don’t understand the difference between WordPress.com and WordPress.org, you may find this information helpful.
If you forgot to include a link to your blog, you can reply and include it below. It’ll help people to answer your question.
This is an automated message.
-
If you are talking about the wordpress.COM stats plugin, in my experience using it and other stats systems is that they they fluctuate from day to day. One day the WP stats plugin will claim 100 hits while GA claims 75 and another will claim 54. Then another day the WP stats might say 75 while GA claims 120 and the other one will claim 22. And on those two days AWStats on my hosting account will claim 105 and 117. I’ve also seen a few days in a row when GA reported zero hits while everything else was reporting 100 or more. They can all swing wildly in different directions from day to day or perhaps even over a few days. Also make sure you are comparing apples to apples. “Visits” as defined by WP are “page views” as defined by another.
Each stats package can also count different things as hits (page views). Some might even count search engine bots and spiders (WP does not).
I gave up trying to tell which one was actually accurate because all of the stats services are on servers other than the one your site is on (unless you are hosted here at wordpress.COM) which means they can all experience internet connection issues and failures anywhere between you and the stats site.
My advice? Just pick one of them and delete the others and never look back. Look for general trends in growth, not pure numbers. It will make you nuts.
-
Before moving here I had a self hosted site and it had three Stats packages built into the system all on the same server and they did not even agree with each other. Then you have the issue of Spam comments and how they are counted or filtered out – my site for a while was averaging 200 Spam comments a day and were they all filtered correctly?
As @thesacredpath says “The trend is your friend”
-
No two stats programs ever agree. Each one of them decides how and what they will count as a hit. Some count page views and some count unique visitors. Therefore, use any of the stats counters only as a general guide to hits.
Understand that an application that is not running on the same servers your blog is on is going to be susceptible to wild fluctuations. This is because all hits have to be transferred over the internet to different servers, and there are literally thousands of things that can go wrong between the server your blog is on and the server at the stats place.
Also be aware of the possibility that the software or hardware at the stats place may be broken and not recording, or counting things as intended.
What is a hit? In web analytics, a hit is any request for a file from a web server. By request means a hit calculates page content delivered, all images to complete that page, and any additional files that need to be loaded to make the web page you are looking at, appear the way it does.
What is a page view? A page view is a request to load a single page of an internet site that results from a page request from a web surfer clicking on a link on another HTML page which is pointing to the page in question.
What is a unique visitor? A unique visitor is access from a single IP to a web server that generates page views and hits during a particular visit. When a visitor has cookies disabled, there is no way of establishing if they are a unique visitor or not.
- The topic ‘Which stats showings are correct?’ is closed to new replies.
WordPress.com Forums 