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These are (non-unique) visits/visitors with AWStats in orange and GA in blue. In Google Analytics: "Visits" - in AWStats: "Number of visits"

I realize the difference between log-based and JS-based tracking, as well as bots spoofing their user agent and being counted as a human in AWStats... but I found this a little over the top.

Is there something I can do with my AWStats config (currently 6.95, build 1.943) to find a happy medium between these two extremes?

Craig
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  • For what it's worth, unique visitors are closer to each other -- April 2011: 62,452 (AWStats) & 45,784 (GA). The problem w/ AWStats & unique visitors is that many folks under the same IP are only counted once. I prefer to reference the actual visits (or 'sessions') – Craig May 08 '11 at 01:38
  • Note that Google Analytics don't use IP to findout about unique users. It does use in fact a random ID + User Agent string – Eduardo May 09 '11 at 10:16
  • Correct - a visitor can move his laptop from work to home and still be counted as a single unique visitor w/ GA. – Craig May 09 '11 at 20:12
  • Are you looking at **Unique Visitors** or **Visitors** in Google Analytics? They both should represent the same thing but one usually reports more than the other due to the way it's calculated. The one that gets lower counts is supposed to go away in future versions. – Eduardo May 09 '11 at 20:16
  • @eduardocereto User Agent string is not considered at all for the definition of a visit. It's purely cookie-based. – Yahel May 09 '11 at 20:40
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    They measure very, very different things. See my answer here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4774469/awstats-or-google-analytics-which-is-more-accurate/4774579#4774579 – Yahel May 09 '11 at 20:41
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    @yc Absolute Unique Visitors just uses the cookie values. Unique Visitors uses the cookies value plus the user agent to help correct for hash collisions. As a result, UV should be greater than or equal to AUV. http://www.lunametrics.com/blog/2010/07/30/absolute-unique-unique-visitors-google-analytics/comment-page-1/#comment-29190 – Eduardo May 09 '11 at 20:59
  • @yc Also I heard this very same explanation from Nick Mihailovsky (GA Engineer at Google) himself. – Eduardo May 09 '11 at 21:01
  • @eduardocereto For GA, **the chart above shows "Visits"** (not "Absolute Unique Visitors") – Craig May 10 '11 at 01:48
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    @Craig - travelvice.com - the gap keeps growing, but the ratio between them seems to be remaining constant. For example, Feb '09 -> AWStats = 60k, GA = 33k (estimated from your graph). AWStats:GA => 1.8:1. For Apr '11, it's 90,000:50,000, again 1.8:1. That's remarkably consistent over 2 years, so I wouldn't mess with the config. Anyone will tell you that you should be looking at *trends*, not absolute values, and the trends are in sync. – Ciaran May 12 '11 at 05:37

1 Answers1

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Ensure the AWStats definition of a Visit is as close possible to what GA considers one to be. See this link.

The standard criteria for a session in Google Analytics is activity without a break of more than 30 minutes OR closing the browser.

M Schenkel
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  • Although I've no idea if this is even a configurable ability in AWStats. These are out of the box figures for the past 5+ years. – Craig May 08 '11 at 01:35