Google Analytics 1/3 of Web Host Stats

[jeremycurtis]

I'm not suprised but when I got my Google Analytics account, the visitor & page views are significantly down on the stats I got from my web host. I guess Google stats are the accurate ones but does anyone know why the host stats are so bloated.

Examples
Date Host Visits GA Visit Host pages GA Pages
May 2 803 254 1862 656
May 3 607 127 1170 239
May 4 517 114 1102 333

The GA code is definitely on all pages as I only have one top level template file and its in there, added at the bottom of the page.

Many thanks for any suggestions.

[Chris]

There are a few reasons for this:

1. Server log files usually report total hits, this means total file requests, not total page views, this can confuse people.

2. Server log analysis programs sometimes get a "pages" statistic by looking for files with .html extensions (or similar) and seeing how often they're requested. If you use frames or other file extensions or includes this could all end up skewed.

3. People with javascript turned off, which includes all search engine robots and other robots (like spam bots) will be recorded by your server logs but not by Google.

[Selkirk]

My tests have shown that about 8% to 15% of real surfers have JavaScript turned off. The rest of the page view discrepancy is due to bots. Differences in unique visitor counts can be due to different algorithms.

Use the server stats for technical analysis: capacity planning, finding 404s or hotlinkers, etc. Use the javascript based stats for financial and marketing analysis.

[jeremycurtis]

Thanks for the answers. I think I've found one of the culprits and that was someone hotlinking some images.