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This has been frustrating me ever since I installed Google Analytics. No matter what day it was, my WP-Stats and Google Analytic numbers never matched up! I could never figure out the reason why. Some days my Analytics numbers would be half of what WP-Stats was showing and that is simply not acceptable. I knew I had to find the reason why and I think I may know why now.
From what I have come to understand about this issue it seems WP-Stats tracks page views while Google Analytics tracks page visits. Well Google Analytics track page views as well but the standard graph that would load would be visits thus where the confusion started. I did not quite understand the difference when I read it either so I grabbed the definitions below from wikipedia:
- Page view – A request for a file whose type is defined as a page in log analysis. An occurrence of the script being run in page tagging. In log analysis, a single page view may generate multiple hits as all the resources required to view the page (images, .js and .css files) are also requested from the web server.
- Visit / Session – A visit is defined as a series of page requests from the same uniquely identified client with a time of no more than 30 minutes between each page request. A session is defined as a series of page requests from the same uniquely identified client with a time of no more than 30 minutes and no requests for pages from other domains intervening between page requests. In other words, a session ends when someone goes to another site, or 30 minutes elapse between pageviews, whichever comes first. A visit ends only after a 30 minute time delay. If someone leaves a site, then returns within 30 minutes, this will count as one visit but two sessions. In practise, most systems ignore sessions and many analysts use both terms for visits. Because time between pageviews is critical to the definition of visits and sessions, a single one pageview event does not constitute a visit or a session (it is a “bounce”).
In a nutshell WP-Stats only tracks how many pages people view once they come to your site. So one visitor may visit multiple pages while on your site, thus the reason why page views is often more larger than visits. They do not track the visitors just the views. While on the other hand, Google Analytics track how many visitors your site gets, how many page views your site gets, as well as a bunch of other data. It makes sense when you think about.
