For a while now I've been scratching my head as to why Google Analytics always shows less visitors to my sites than AWStats. On a couple of sites, I've also got Adsense running and this reports less page views too.
I posted a thread about this on DP a few months ago but didn't get any definitive answers. The most sensible answer I got was that since the Analytics code was at the bottom of the page, if people don't wait for an entire page to load, the Analytics code doesn't run though AWStats still counts the page as loaded. I'm prepared to accept this as a reason why some pages don't count but on one of my shareware sites, AWStats is showing around 2500 page views a day while Adsense shows a measly 450 or so. I don't show ads on the submit page but since I'm only getting 80 submissions a day or so, these should only account for about 200 on top of the 450 Adsense tells me I'm getting.
Am I reading the AWStats figures incorrectly? The way I read the figures, robot visits (like Googlebot or Slurp) aren't included in the headline visitor/ page views. Is this correct?
by ML
Sorry I don't have AWStats, I use to, but I can't remember. I asked Blue and he said AW wasn't very good.
ReplyDeleteI do think page load time is important and if you look at your stats, every user page is followed my a vist from google to check content so it can produce relevant ads.
Thanks for the tip about the google visit. I wonder if this near doubles the figures AWStats reports. You'd think not but maybe AWStats isn't clever enough to twig the difference.
ReplyDeleteCertainly sounds like it!
ReplyDeleteExplains why google ads take a little longer to display too.