I admit, my expertise is not in third-party statistical programs. However, I have recently discovered something that left me wondering ‘what’s going on?’ I, like so many bloggers, use Bloggers stats too to show my pageviews per day, yesterday, month and all time. I also use Google Analytics: a free web based program which tracks all different types of stats for your blog. However, I find myself with different stats which gaps of 40% between stats! Why is this? Why does Blogger stats show different values to Google Analytics? Well I think I may have found the answer.
Let’s start off with my problem. In my Blogger stats, I can see that my pageviews for last month were 11,103:
So that was from 5th September 2011 – 4th October 2011 (it says 27th September – 4th October because the stats are showing weekly but for month the dates are 5th Sept – 4th Oct). Therefore, if I place them two dates into Google Analytics I should get the same number? Well check out the number I get instead.
7,604! That’s 3,499 pageviews difference! Why is the gap so huge between these two different programs which record the stats of the same blog? Well, my theory is simple and logical (I hope!).
To let Google Analytics record your stats, you have to install a bit of HTML code onto your blog such as this:
<script type=’text/javascript’>
var _gaq = _gaq || []; _gaq.push([&#;_setAccount&#;, &]); _gaq.push([&#;_trackPageview&#;]);
(function() { var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type = 'text/javascript'; ga.async = true; ga.src = (&#;https:&#; == document.location.protocol ? &#;https://ssl&#; : &#;http://www&#;) + &#;.google-analytics.com/ga.js&#;; var s = document.getElementsByTagName(&#;script&#)[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })();
</script>
As you can see, it begins with a script and ends with a script. This is where I think Google Analytics flaw is.
Many internet users (for me, around 30% of my visitors) use ad blockers which block adverts. Because adverts are ‘scripts’ like Google Analytics’ code, you will find the ad blockers will block any HTML code that has ‘script’ in it from appearing or being used. Therefore, Google Analytics shows the stats for people that don’t use ad blockers on your blog.
Is that a fair judgement? If not, why do you think Google Analytics gets different results to Blogger or WordPress Stats? Comment below.
