How accurate is WordPress.com Stats (vs. Google Analytics)?

Javascript based Analytics like Google Analytics can never be 100% accurate because many people have javascript blockers installed on their browsers.

https://www.google.com/search?q=javascript+block+analytics

Around the middle of the following article there are some interesting comments on analytics, tracking and accuracy.

https://www.marketingexperiments.com/improving-website-conversion/increase-conversion-technology.html

Thanks for that link, honewatson. I’m aware of the issue of javascript with regards to stats collection, but I always assumed that the error was between 5-10 %. I am just surprised that the WordPress stats system would report 100-200% more traffic than Analytics.

My suspicion is that Google Analytics does a better job of excluding hits by spam bots and spiders, and that ultimately it is more accurate. I think I’ll just continue adding 10% to the numbers I get from Analytics to account for browsers with disabled javascript and not rely too much on the WordPress.com stats plugin.

I’m not agree with you honewatson

directly from plugin official FAQ:

Is it compatible with WP-Cache?
The plugin collects stats via a javascript call, so as long as the JS call is on the page stats will be collected just fine, whether the page is cached or not.

I’ve the same problem of daltonrooney, with a large discrepancy of data beetwen Google Analytics and WordPress.com Stats…

I’m surprised we haven’t gotten more discussion on this matter. Accuracy should be something that has been tested and results shared with those using the plugin.

My Analytics and WP.com Stats numbers don’t line up either, and the discrepancy more than the number of people who are blocking Javascript. (Analytics reports Javascript support so I can see those numbers… of course that begs the question: how does it report a browser without Javascript support when it takes Javascript to run the Analytics script?)

My numbers don’t line up either.

WordPress always shows slightly more than Analytics.

I was thinking the same as you guys here, but I think I’ve got it figured out: Analytics is showing the number of visits and WP Stats is showing the number of views.

Can someone confirm ‘my’ theory…?

I think I figured it out.

Google Analytics shows visits and visitors, and pageviews and unique pageviews. But on their dashboard, they only GRAPH visits.

All these terms are defined here: https://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=57164. I’ll post ’em below:

Visits vs. Visitors
Analytics measures both visits and visitors in your account. Visits represent the number of individual sessions initiated by all the visitors to your site. If a user is inactive on your site for 30 minutes or more, any future activity will be attributed to a new session. Users that leave your site and return within 30 minutes will be counted as part of the original session.
The initial session by a user during any given date range is considered to be an additional visit and an additional visitor. Any future sessions from the same user during the selected time period are counted as additional visits, but not as additional visitors.

Pageviews vs. Unique Pageviews
A pageview is defined as a view of a page on your site that is being tracked by the Analytics tracking code. If a visitor hits reload after reaching the page, this will be counted as an additional pageview. If a user navigates to a different page and then returns to the original page, a second pageview will be recorded as well.
A unique pageview, as seen in the Top Content report, aggregates pageviews that are generated by the same user during the same session. A unique pageview represents the number of sessions during which that page was viewed one or more times.

WordPress Stats tracks and graphs pageviews ONLY (according to the plug-in page). However they don’t define pageviews. So you can only assume they are similiarly tracked like Google Analytics.

For example. Yesterday (October 30), WordPress Stats says my site received 103 views. Google Analytics says my site received 99 pageviews. CLOSE ENOUGH! Plus this discrepancy could be caused by the fact that WordPress displays your stats by Greenwich Mean Time, whereas Google uses your specified timezone.

So when you’re using Analytics you should make sure to look at the pageview stats, not the graph which shows visits, if you’re comparing to WordPress.