Webalizer vs Google Analytics… who to believe?
We always use Google Analytics for our website statistics, and I always thought this was a good way to go… I just took a look at a websites who also has Webalizer running, the difference is HUGE! For example:
Google Analytics: 126 visits, 248 pageviews
Webalizer: 749 visits, 2169 pageviews
On the same day! How can this be? I read about Webalizer being unreliable due to the fact a visitor can visit from multiple IP’s (proxy) but can that explain this big of a difference? On the other hand I read about GA being unreliably due to the fact it can only track visitors with JavaScript enabled.. but how many people these days don’t have JavaScript?
There’s also configuration issues regarding recognizing search engine bots, timelines and algorithms for distinguishing multiple visitors from behind a single IP, plus a few problems.
Webalizer is fine for general trends, but Google Analytics really gets into the nitty gritty.
Problems with JavaScript being off these days isn’t quite to prevalent except in reader only browsers.
The biggest differences come from the way they collect their data.
Where GA uses JavaScript, webalyzer uses the access log.
The access log also contains lots of spider traffic – which is completely excluded in GA.
I don’t think either one is wrong but as with all statistic: what is your goal and how are you going to measure will define the outcome.
Ciao,
Henjo
But wait, you don’t need javascript for GA!
http://www.vdgraaf.info/google-analytics-without-javascript.html
I always compare server stat and GA.
for ex.server stat didn’t recognize google bot and local bot machines
“spider24.yandex.ru
crawl-66-249-65-24.googlebot.com”
=amount of the pages.
and webalizer count backend hits.
i thnk Ga uses better user remember technologies from adsense and so on)
And not to forget: it’s better to focus on trends than on numbers! Numbers are not reliable in webstats – never. Trending is (way more) reliable though.