Site Visits

Permalink
I have just started a new site and am really confused by the descrepancy between the visits logged on the concrete 5 dashboard and that shown by Google Analytics. Yesterday Concrete 5 showed 499 visits, whereas Google only had 15! I assume that the concrete 5 data is number of pages viewed rather than number of visits (disappointingly!) but surely 15 people aren't clicking around 33 times each! I'm sure I'm being incredibly dim so your advice would be appreciated. Thanks.

 
openly replied on at Permalink Reply
openly
Hi

I strongly recommend you look at http://www.concrete5.org/marketplace/addons/stats/... if you want accurate reporting of website traffic. It $25 but well worth the money.

Also Tony has written a few posts about how it works and the benefits over google analytic. Although there is no reason why you cant run both.
jbx replied on at Permalink Reply
jbx
Thanks for the link openjuice! Hadn't seen that addon - looks incredible... Going on my "tobuy" list :)
openly replied on at Permalink Reply
openly
If you want to try before you buy, I am running it on a demo site of mine.

I cant post the link here yet as we have not finished it yet however if you want it please send me a private message or send me an email bruno@openjuice.co.uk. (this offer is open to anyone, also if there are any other Add-on you would like to try please ask, we probably have it or would be happy to buy it)
jbx replied on at Permalink Reply
jbx
A comment from Franz on the stats:
<http://www.concrete5.org/community/forums/chat/large_site_scalabili... >

That graph in the dashboard home - just turn off statistics. Its cute on small sites but only a step away from useless - it also takes for ever to load. We routinely turn it off on any mid sized site and everything loads faster.
frz replied on at Permalink Reply
frz
that's true, its load intensive..

However, I also don't get why google is so off from our reporting. We simply track every page load. So yeah, an editing experience will create a lot of page loads.. putting page in edit mode, changing stuff that might force a reload, exiting edit mode.. adds up.
the dashboard pages also count as page loads, so that adds up.

That being said, I gotta think that google is clumping some page hits into a single view. They say they dont (or a client of mine says they say that somewhere) but I can't help thinking that if they see a few hits coming from the same IP with the same minute or two that counts as one "view" to them instead of the 10x it counts to us..

That's just a guess tho, I don't get it.
zoiig replied on at Permalink Reply
zoiig
Google does look at "proxies" as one factor to determine traffic - but one thing google has the rest of us don't a toolbar and a "search" feature with a cookie function in a number of browsers..

If you were to go to your site from laptop "A" and edit or search the web from that browser Google builds a web history based on that browser and profile - the day you login to you Gmail account on that laptop Google associate those searces and that history with you...

If in the same house / apartment / dorm / coffee bar you were to login to you site to edit then that browser history would start.....

Google takes out a number of "things" that visit your site including bots, spiders, crawlers, aggragators, monitors, droids, dupes, sims, knobs, etc... these can either "declare" or not not they are an automated system.

Given that Google has to keep up w/ click fraud they're pretty good about what's real and what's not with visitors...

That said mobile proxies on non-ATnT system still seems to give it a few issues...

Try installing Bing's webmaster tools and Yahoo's "site explorer" into your site for a third party comparison. Addditionaly "compete.com" or "quincast" offer some interesting tools as well.