Will My Real Website Monthly Visitors Please Stand Up?
On my printing website I have 4 different statistics programs installed. The difference between the three are enormous. I ask people to read this short article, you may learn something.
I have been in the business for many years, and I learned a long time ago not to believe the stats that my hosting company gives. In the past 2 weeks I’ve met at least 3 people who were showing me their stats. I didn’t want to take the wind out of their sails by explaining this to them, so i figured I would do a quick blog post about it and perhaps send them a link.
These are the statistics of my printing website here in Lakeland Florida from 3 different sources:
Webalizer Stats - Click To Enlarge
Webalizer Stats: These statistics come with my BlueHost web hosting account. This report says that I received 41,027 visitors during June 2009.
Awstats (Click To Enlarge)
Awstats: These statistics also come with my BlueHost Account. According to these I received 16,884 visitors with 10,949 unique visitors in June of 2009. This is a big difference from Webalizer.
Google Analytics
Google Analytics: It reports I had 6,694 visitors in June of 2009. It’s a far cry from the other 2 reports.
BLVD Status Live Web Stats
BLVD Status: This is a great live stats program I use, and the numbers are very close to Google Analytics reporting 16,712 visitors during the month of June 2009.
Why The Difference?
There are a gazillion bots and spiders constantly scanning the web. The more links you have pointing to your website you have, the more spider traffic you will get. For this reason you shouldn’t rely on the top 2. I’m sorry to disappoint you, but that’s the way it is. You’re probably not getting half the traffic you though your were.
Stick with Google Analytics and BLVD Status for the real deal.
