CODEWITHSUNDEEP
google-analytics
medonja
medonja

Reputation: 308

Google Analytics not tracking all page views

How (im)precise is Google Analytics actually? I've been using Google Analytics for years now on a pretty well visited web site (800k+ visits per month).

Now I decided to log every page request in a database table, and I'm tracking the user-agent of the request. I have also eliminated bot requests (googlebot, bingbot and many more...)

What I found out is that I have almost more than double requests to a page than Google Analytics pageviews is willing to admit.

E.g. GA shows 137 pageviews to a specific URL, but I tracked even 255!

Upvotes: 3

Views: 6112

Answers (1)

Eduardo
Eduardo

Reputation: 22824

Google Analytics is VERY precise. It's not very accurate though. And that's the difference you're seeing since you're not looking into trends but instead at absolute numbers.

Start by reading this post by Avinash:

Reflections: Accuracy, Precision & Predictive Analytics

Bots are everywhere these days and a lot of times disguised as real user agents. You should come up with a testing to make sure client have both javascript and cookies enabled. In that case he'll be tracked by Google Analytics.

Besides that that some users might have adBlocks extensions that block Google Analytics. This is fairly uncommon but depending on the public can be more common. Tech savvy users have a higher chance to use a plugin that blocks GA, thus IT blogs might be hit by this harder than an average site.

The best way to test the real accuracy of Google Analytics ignoring user agents without javascript, cookies and that block GA tracking is to track the users on your site using GA as well. You can do that in Google Analytics using the LocalRemoteServerMode.

Add the following line at the end of your GATC (GA Tracking Code):

_gaq.push(['_setLocalGifPath', 'http://mysite.com/__utm.gif']);
_gaq.push(['_setLocalRemoteServerMode']);

Make sure to replace http://mysite.com/__utm.gif with a path on the same domain as your website and that respond a gif. Use a lightweight gif, like the one GA uses.

Then you can get the logs of access to this gif and see in their parameters the urls visited. You'll need to do some extra processing but you'll be using the same framework GA uses to collect data and thus will measure more efficiently GA precision.

More Info:

https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/gajs/methods/gaJSApiUrchin#_gat.GA_Tracker_._setLocalGifPath

Upvotes: 4

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