Hey Rich!
This is a topic that pop ups every now and then, so please forgive me for the wall of text you’re about to read ??
I have Jetpack installed and the view counts in Jetpack’s Site Stats do not match the view counts in Popular Posts’ Stats.
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What’s going on here?
To be honest with you: no idea. Comparing two tracking tools will always get you varying results as both surely don’t follow the exact same criteria to track / store data. One may be excluding bots / spiders while the other doesn’t; one may be showing you unique page visits while the other is shows you the total views count; what if the user left before the page finished loading? One of these tracking tools might had had the chance to register the visit while the other couldn’t because it wasn’t able to push the data fast enough; What if there was a Javascript error that prevented most of the scripts for working, except one of the tracking tools did manage to register the visit?; WPP has a featured called Data Sampling that when activated (there are some hosts that force it enabled all of the time and it can’t be turned off) may give page views counts that could a bit off at first; etc. I can go on and on, you get the idea ??
Can’t say anything about Jetpack or other tracking tools out there, I can only speak for WPP since I’m the one behind it. I’ve compared it to what Google Analytics reports for my site and _in my personal experience_ they both provide similar statistics. Then again, a few people have reported that what GA reports is slightly different to what WPP says (for some people, GA reported more visits than WPP, for others it was the exact opposite). There are even some people who have claimed that Google Analytics is innacurate. Imagine that.
What I’m saying is: there’s no tool that’s 100% accurate. External variables (user configuration, server performance/configuration, site configuration, data filtering criteria, data collecting criteria, even the Internet speed of the visitor, etc.) will make a difference, even if a small one, from one tool to another. I just decided to trust what WPP says because, well, I built it obviously so I know what it does and how it works and that’s enough for me ??
