Huge Difference (5-6 times) between Awstats & Google Analytics

[Imranprojects]

I have site with nearly 40k pages. We were using GA and for some reasons, we were not getting the expected traffic. We are on the first page of Google.com for many high search volume keywords.
So we installed Awstat and the difference is 5-6 times. If GA is showing 100 then Awstat shows 580-600.
If we check Total Unique Visits the difference is nearly 2 times but if we check Visits its 5-6 times. What is Visit and Uniques visit for GA and Awstat?
I know there are different tracking process involved (Jscript/Log file)
Pl suggest me what should I do to trouble shoot?


Thanks in advance

[lammert]

Hi Imranprojects, first of all Welcome to WebmasterWorld!

The difference between JavaScript execution and log file parsing is one thing which can make a difference. Only browsers executing the JavaScript will be counted by GA as valid users. There are however other things which can be important.

The loglines which AwStats analyzes are generated at the first pageload request to the server, while Google advices to put the GA script call at the end of the HTML file. If you have a number of images or other load time consuming properties on your site and whil loading the visitor decides that your page is not interesting enough and hits the back button, that visitor will be counted by AwStats, but not by GA because the execution point of the JavaScript code is never reached.

Another problem are proxy servers used by some ISPs. One well known example is AOL, but there are many other ISPs who use proxy servers between their users and the global internet. In many of those proxy configurations a single user can connect to a website over several different IPs simultaneously, causing many visits to be counted by AwStats, but only one by GA because a tracking cookie is used by GA to identify unique users.

A last point is the version of AwStats you are using. If it wasn't recently updated, AwStats may not have an uptodate database of robots and other automated requests to your site and may therefore count a number of robots as human visits. GA's robot database is updated more often and the use of JavaScript and Cookies makes it less vulnerable for counting robots as normal visits.

Therefore, in general the GA number will be less than the actual number of visits, while the AwStats number will be more.

[Imranprojects]

Thanks Lammert for the reply.
I would like to add a fews things:
1) We are using the latest version of awstats as we recently downloaded it from the official site.
2) We are on 6 position for a keyword with local searched of 22,000 on Google.com, but we are not getting any traffic from this keyword. We have used the keyword as it is and it is very catchy. You you plz explain this?
3) You mean to say that the above stated difference is justified. If not what should I do for trouble shooting?


Thanks in advance.

[AnkitMaheshwari]

Imran, double check that the GA code is properly implemented on all pages especially the once that Awstats shows are having maximum visits and uniques as this can also be one of the reason for lower traffic reported by GA.

[Imranprojects]

Thanks Ankit,

Imran