Wp Statistics does not match Google Analytics

WP Statistics and Google use very different methods of detecting online users so it’s probably not possible for them to align.

I also have big difference in user count of Google Analytics and the user count of this plugin.

I dont understand that different methods have different number of users:

If there are 10 users, then it should be 10 users with each method.

If another method gives a different number then this method fails.

Unfortunately it’s not that simple, the web is a stateless environment so users only talk to the server when they need another page. This makes being “online” difficult to track.

Even the best algorithm is only an estimate. For example if a user has the page open but in the background of their browser are they online?

If the page is in the foreground but the user has left their computer are they online?

Since we only track server side events, we estimate online users based on a reasonable amount of time since the last time they loaded a page from the site.

Thanks for your reply. But you are talking about online users. I was talking about the count of daily users.
example: yesterday visitor count: WP Statistics says i had 13 visitors yesterday, and Google Analytics says I had 35 visitors.
I think that’s a big difference in numbers.

Visitor detection is a complex process, the number of robots, spambots, malware and other “non-users” out there is huge.

Google and WP Statistics use different algorithms and methods to detect these and exclude them, with different pros and cons, hence different numbers.

Thanks for pointing that out.

The biggest difference I get between WP Statistics and Google Analytics are traffic from the USA. WP Stat is counting these US traffic, but Google Analytics does not seem to count this traffic from US.

Google doesn’t publish their algorithm so there’s no way to know what they do and don’t count as traffic.