Awstats vs google analytics code#
Awstats vs google analytics free#

Then there is also the differing ways Awstats and Google Analytics counts a session in regards to visits. So, both can have the tendency to inflate and deflate the traffic numbers. Also if the user repeatedly clears his cookies in the middle of a visit, that will also count as multiple visits. Google Analytics uses browser-specific cookies to track visitors multiple times in multiple locations, but it can’t track one person across their multiple browsers. AOL users) – essentially, it double counts as a user’s ip address changes/moves around and counts multiple users from the same IP address as being the same visitor. So, it is not following a user who visits from multiple locations, or who has a dynamic IP address (i.e. Just look under files viewed.Īccuracy on counting visitors/unique visitors? Awstats counts visitors based on their IP address. If your server is using a lot of bandwidth with not a lot of website visitors, analyzing your Awstats data can be useful in determining whether it is due to “hot linking” of your images or other document files, whereby other websites are directly linking to your website images/document files.

Awstats vs google analytics code#

Awstats has a list of known robot/spider ips, and most of them do identify themselves as robots/spiders, but not all do.Īlso, Awstats counts visitors that have accessed image files or document files on your server directly, that would not have the Google Analytics code loaded, and so would not be counted by Google Analytics. But, while Awstats does try to identify and exclude these non-human visits, it can’t do so with 100% accuracy. The Awstats program does distinguish between the visits from humans and non-humans, categorizing traffic as “Viewed traffic” and “Not viewed traffic”, where “Not viewed traffic includes traffic generated by robots, worms, or replies with special HTTP status codes”.

Awstats vs google analytics free#

UltimateWB offers Awstats in all of its web hosting packages as a free included program, but some companies such as GoDaddy web hosting may treat it as an “add-on” and charge extra to have a such a cool traffic statistics program.ĭifference in what is counted? Because of the differing methods of traffic tracking, Awstats can detect search engine bots that access and crawl your website to learn more about your website content, link structure, etc., whereas Google Analytics does not register this type of traffic since most crawlers and spiders don’t run JavaScript code.

You can access the Awstats program from your web hosting control panel, more info on this here. This is why Awstats is often referred to as a log file analyzer. Then Awstats processes and analyzes the log files to create its pretty reports and graphs. The web server generates and stores a log for each visit to your website. Also, Google Analytics opt-out users are not counted either.Īwstats, on the other hand, is a program that is hosted on your own server – it is not sharing info with Google, which you may prefer if you like that privacy aspect of it. So, if a website visitor happens to have disabled Cookies and/or JavaScript in their internet browser, the code that Google Analytics uses may not get run and those visits are not counted. Google Analytics gathers visitor information from this generated code that is loaded onto each page of your website, using a combination of JavaScript and Cookies to notify Google each time one of your webpages is visited. If you are using UltimateWB software, this is quite easy to do – in one step you can load the code on all your webpages by using the Ad(d)s app. Google Analytics requires you to copy/paste the JavaScript code they provide to you on each of your webpages.

If you are using both Google Analytics and Awstats, you will probably notice right away that the traffic statistics do not match! Awstats generally will show a lot more traffic, and the reason for this is the different ways the two measure traffic. So which is better, which is more accurate, which is more useful – i.e.

You can get this info from both Google Analytics and your website server’s traffic statistics program, Awstats. You want to increase your website visitors and want to know which pages are getting the most attention, how your website visitors are finding your website – which search terms they are using and which website urls are referring them to your website, from which pages they enter into your website and from which pages they leave on your website, how much they stay on your website and how interactive they are on your website (pages/visit), and which countries your visitors are coming from, during what time of day. It can be very useful to check your website traffic statistics as you are working on growing your website popularity and reach.