Comments on: Webalizer vs Google Analytics… who to believe?

By: Henjo Hoeksma

Henjo Hoeksma — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 10:13:56 +0000

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.

By: РОма

РОма — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 21:33:14 +0000

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)

By: Aaron

Aaron — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 14:18:39 +0000

But wait, you don’t need javascript for GA!

http://www.vdgraaf.info/google-analytics-without-javascript.html

By: Henjo Hoeksma

Henjo Hoeksma — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 07:13:45 +0000

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

By: Michael Cannon

Michael Cannon — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 01:41:39 +0000

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.