Urchin V5 vs Webtrends V5 discrepancy

Difference in analysing sessions from same log

[websofa]

Can anyone help?

Urchin V5 shows over half the amount of sessions as Webtrends V5.5 when analysing same logs (23,000 vs 50,000).

Have checked config for session length and they are both the same, 30 mins inactivity is the cut off. Anyone else experienced this? Any solutions/config changes I can make?

[ogletree]

You can get 10 programs and get 10 different numbers. This is very common. They each have different ways of coming up with that number. Log file stats is not an exact science. Log files were not designed to be used the way they are today. The best stat that I use is the number of visitors in the search engine section. Also you need to filter out bots. Look at the browser section and see how many weird browsers you have. Also look at operating systems. You will see a lot of bogus traffic. The important thing is to just keep using the same program that way you can see a consistent change to make decisions on. I don’t know of any log file program that comes set up right out of the box. I have seem people pick programs solely on the fact that that program showed more visitors than another. Filters are your friends. Try to get more accurate data.

[cgrantski]

I think discrepancies between this exact pair (WT & U) was discussed earlier in this forum, in a lot of detail. Try a search.