Google Analytics VS awstats VS the world

[lhw455]

Hi lhw455, welcome to experienced-people.net.

Why do you find piwik good? What are the features that most appeal to you?

Thanks, couple reasons I like piwik:
uni
- dashbaord view, see all your sites in one easy view;
- has all the features of Google Analytics that matter to me, keywords, search engines, pages per visits, etc

And finally, the fact that I don't give Google any of my traffic data!

[Clinton]

Sounds good to me. I'll definitely check it out when I get a chance.

[Tassadar]

I usually take the averages from Analytics, StatCounter, and AWStats. All three give me roughly different stats afterall.

[Andy]

Andy, I know some people use GREP to great effect, but isn't the rendering of raw data into a more useful format exactly what programs like 123 currently do?

Clinton,

I don't know. I don't do nearly enough with analytics. I think there is some more useful information to be gathered from visitors than what this data can provide.

Andy

[benitez17]

I tried Piwik some time ago and I was pretty disappointed with the results because they reported less than half of the visitors captured by Google Analytics for the same level of traffic in the server logs. Maybe it is worth giving it another shot now.

[richrf]

On my site, Google analytics is usually updated in real time with the end-of-day about 1:00pm CST. GA does a great job of handling repeat visitors and filtering out users that shouldn't be counted (e.g. myself), but I have found that it is not counting everyone because it is using Javascript and cookies. I would consider AWStats the upper end of the count. I also use Quantcast in order to compare my site to other sites that are also choosing real counts by including the Quantcast script on their site.

I actually like the idea that Google knows what is happening on my site because it appears that my SERP improves the more traffic that I get and the more that visitors linger on my site (e.g. average time on site, bounce rate, etc.). While it is intrusive, it does help Google judge the trustworthiness and authority of my site.

[Clinton]

Rich, are you sure Google uses GA information in the algo? I recall them stating very categorically that they don't. When did that change?

[richrf]

Hi Clinton,

In Google's TOS they specifically say that they can use the analytics for internal purposes. I have discussed this issue on other SEO forums and there is general concurrence among the specialists that Google is using the metrics - and for good reason, since they want to find the best possible landing pages for their advertising customers.

In my own experiments, I am totally convinced that Google is using the metrics. Not only Analytics but a variety of other sources such as their toolbar and adwords.

[Clinton]

Rich, do you have a quote from their TOS stating this? (What TOS anyway, do you mean Webmaster Guidelines?)

I recall that a couple of years ago they stated not only that GA wasn't being used in the algo but that it would never be used. It would be sneaky if that was a claim just to convince more webmasters to sign up to GA. Many webmasters I know moved to analytics only because they believed Google's promise!

[grynge]

I believe they use GA to see how they are doing against the competition. They would know the exact keywords that bing/baidu/yandex and the amount of traffic. This would allow them to then tweak their own algo to mimic any successful keywords from their competition. I think it was one of their smartest decisions ever, what better way to look into your competitors than have access to millions of websites traffic data.