Different results in different stat counters

What is the reason?

[Vis3R]

I was seeing alot of differences between some of the visit counters and the google Impressions. So i've put up a javascript counter and it shows the same impressions as google does. So i was wondering maybe it's cause most people don't have javascript installed or something? should i advertise javascript on my website? tell people to download or activate it? (does javascript come with Java or does it come by default on windows?) It would help alot cause then they would see my adds and not a blank space.
For every 1000 users, only 200 see the adds. There's alot of money we're missing here. Any idea how to increase this?

[Hobbs]

- Maybe different countries where some don't see the ads?
- Maybe some of your pages are not showing ads at all?

[Vis3R]

I thought it's that, that's why i put on a javascript counter and it showed the same info as google does. The counter has nothing to do with adds and the only thing in common they have is they're both depending on java. The counter that doesn't count by using javascipt shows 5x more visitors.

[Hobbs]

Ok,
Maybe your problem is is the statistics programs not AdSense, and in the way a visitor is calculated.
One could be counting unique IPs and another counting a visit from the same IP separated by an hour or more as a visitor?

Added: You know that AdSense counts in ad impressions no matter an ad loaded or not, right?

[edited by: Hobbs at 3:06 pm (utc) on Sep. 13, 2006]

[Vis3R]

I've tried more than one stat counter, and those that do use javascript have same stats and those which don't show more visitors. I'll check if there's a way to detect if a user have javascript enabled and make a php script that checks it, it should show if the problem is that users don't have javascript enabled, forgot to test that before posting here. Anyway, did you try any non-javascript-based counter to check your stats? If so, does it show the same stats as adsense/other javascript counter?

[Hobbs]

Forget number of visitors, when it comes to AdSense, think page and ad impressions.

I am happy with AwStats, it generates reports off the site log file.

[Vis3R]

So do i, i use awstats as my main counter. It shows 3000 pageviews atm, the javascript one and adsense show +- 200 impressions.

[edited by: Vis3R at 3:31 pm (utc) on Sep. 13, 2006]

[Hobbs]

+- 200 impressions means around 2,800 impressions?
not bad a variance
also please consider that some stat programs are smarter than others in detecting bots and page reapers (offline browsing)

[Vis3R]

+- 200 impressions means 180-220 impressions ;)

[Hobbs]

I would trust awstats more than any java counter, the new one actually can report more details like how many visitors have java installed.

As for AdSense, you need to make sure that each of your pages has enough content to load ads, browse through them and check if many don't display ads.

[theBear]

Javascript has nothing to do with Java two seperate things.

Javascript can be disabled in most browsers.

Simple page downloaders and a number of bots don't have javascript capabilities.

[jomaxx]

Something like 95% of humans have Javascript enabled. Something like 100% of web spiders have Javascript DISabled.

Since your Javascript tracking roughly matches Google's statistics, it's a reasonable assumption that the discrepancy is simply due to web spiders.

[frox]

that has always puzzled me too, discrepancies are soo strong (even between different stats packages)

same site, same month:

Webalizer:
Pages: 1.858.233
Visits: 380.392
Unique sites: 271.227

Awstats
Pages: 1.358.980
Visits: 349.203
Unque visitors: 246.132

Adsense:
Impressions: about 30-50% of the pagevies reported by the other stats

(I see the impression/pageviews ratio is much lower for some of you, so I should not complain!)

[theBear]

Oh and stats packages count things differently.

This month paackage1 has x agents it filters out whereas package2 has y agents it filters out and package3 still counts everything so it has 0 agents it filters out.

x,y, and 0 may or may not be the same.

The valuses of x and y change over time.

Normally the goal of a stats package is to present numbers related to people visitors. They just don't always agree as to how to determine what is a person.

Google ads are normally served by javascript calls. Therefor for an ad impression to occur the client must have javascript capabilites and it must be turned on.

[edited by: theBear at 6:57 pm (utc) on Sep. 13, 2006]

[BigDave]

jomaxx nailed this one. Your problem is almost certainly bots of various flavours.

If you are running some sort of blog software, take a look at what pages are getting the most hits. I would be willing to bet that it is pages with "comment" in the URL.

I reduced my "visitors" count in awstats by around 80% when I stopped serving the comment form to anyone without the proper "referer" header. Not surprisingly, this also reduced my spam, caused my real top pages to be listed, and didn't affect AdSense impression count at all. The bots still hit, but they don't concentrate on my sites anywhere near as much.

If it isn't a blog, there might still be things about your site that causes certain types of bots to pay too much attention to your site. Take a look at which IP addresses have the most hits. Do a reverse lookup on them. If they don't seem legit, go ahead and ban them.

Even if a few of them are people with JS turned off, it is not worth your effort to get them to turn it back on. People do not accidentally turn it off. If they truned it off, you can be fairly certain that they are not going to be clicking on your ads anyway.

[Pengi]

Don't forget when comparing stats from different sources that it is not only important to make sure the stats have the same definition, but also to check that are on based on the same time zone.

I am aware of significant daily and weekly cycles - if you compare stats that have a few hours difference this can produce some large anomalies on individual days - but should balance out over a week.

[Vis3R]

Good idea about the referer. I will make a script that redirects everybody to my main page if the refer isn't my domain. Cause they're probably taking the daily updated data directly using a bot instead of reading it from my website. When the bot is not going to get the daily data anymore they'll hopefully stop using it on my website. I think this should work.

[BigDave]

Is your home page the only page that you allow in the search engines? If not, you better not force users to your home page first.

[jomaxx]

I will make a script that redirects everybody to my main page if the refer isn't my domain.

I don't know if you're including blank referrers in this plan as well, but either way this sounds like a spectacularly bad idea.

[Vis3R]

I know it will affect people coming from searches and other websites refering to my sites. I thought of that and when i find a good way to get around that, i'll do it :). There is a file they can download daily and that's probably where they put the bot to read. And this website is not in search engines so i'll prolly put this redirect only for this file.

[edited by: Vis3R at 4:53 am (utc) on Sep. 14, 2006]