statistics showing different numbers

@eijan thanks for contacting us. Just so we are talking about the same dataset, if I select last 30 days, March 31st is also included, but today is not. While for month to date, March 31st is not included, but today is.

The data you see on the dashboard is retrieved from the summary tables, for faster loading on sites with a lot of data. Can you check the data you get if you disable the summary tables (which will make the dashboard load directly from the raw data), by adding

define( 'BURST_DONT_USE_SUMMARY_TABLE', true );

To your wp-config.php

We’ll also investigate this further.

Thank you for answering. Unfortunately, I don’t know how to add that sentence anywhere.

What I wanted to say is, that if you select “last 30 days” it is not showing right. This is not question about one day difference, but me trying to give a simple enough example. It is showing wrong and the difference is big.

I will look into it and get back to you.

hi Rogier,

now, as the month changed, “month to date” is showing zero. So, I have left “last 30 days”, which was the higer value. To my suprise, this seems to be the more accurate value, the higer value? The other one, month to date, is not counting all data and showing smaller value, or something?

What is the timezone you’re in? It might have something to do with that.

minus two hours, Finland

Just to make sure we’re talking about the same thing: Month to date on the first of the month would be counting just the visits for today, and nothing else. While last 30 days would be counting april. So when you do this on the first of the month the result is not very similar, and can show zero for the Month to date. What you can check now for example, is a data range from april 2nd to april 30th, compared to last 30 days, which should only differ the count of april 1st.

For the last day of the month, as you did yesterday, the last 30 days minus count from March 31st, plus count from yesterday should amount to the count for Month to date.

I don’t think it’s caused by a timezone. What I would like to exclude, is if the differences on your site is caused by the summary tables (which create a total visitor count per page and for the site, per day). If you want to check if this is the case for you, you can install the plugin from below branch:

https://github.com/Burst-Statistics/burst/tree/cron-notice-%2B-disable-summary-option

Steps to do this:
– Deactivate the current plugin
– Download the plugin from the above link, by clicking on the green button ‘code’, then click ‘download zip’
– Go to plugins/add new/upload, and upload the downloaded zip file.

This version adds a setting that allows you to disable the summary tables. You can find it in settings/advanced ‘Disable the usage of summary tables’.

It would help me enormously if you can check this, because that would give me an idea of where the problem is, and a possible solution as well.

@eijan I think the problem is caused by the summary tables: these generate totals for each day, for performance reasons in the dashboard, which is important for high traffic sites. Because each day is calculated separately, it can happen that a unique visitor is counted in each day count. Especially on lower traffic sites, the impact of this difference can be larger.

I have created a version where summary tables will only be used on sites with over 100k hits per month (still tweaking that number). This should automatically disable the summary tables on all sites below that treshold.

I think we can test and merge this change in the next release, if you’re interested, you can install this version from the above branch.

As I can’t test with your specific data, I can’t be 100% sure that this resolves your issue, but fairly confident that it will.

Thank you Rogier,

I appreciate your effort very much, thank you. Unfortunately I am so untechnical, I did not manage to download the plugin you recommended. I did try.

Your solution sounds reasonable. As soon as I get someone to help me, I will try that version. It sounds interesting. After all, I know now, which numbers to follow and I get the final count in the end of the month.