Thread

Regarding the placement of the GA code, it largely depends on your goals: Putting the code at the top of the page will count more views of partically loaded pages as well, whereas the position at the end might miss some “fly by” visits. The longer the overall page load time, the bigger the difference can get.

So, if you are mostly interested only in counting “real” visits, it is often best to place the code at the end of the page. If you want to come most closely to the numbers your log files will tell you (or you have some advertisers you’d like to impress), the code should be places at the top (and therefore executed early on pageload). In addition, GA statistics will only work for users that do not disable JS in the browser. Therefore, undercounting is a normal behaviour.

Markus

(Hey, this is my 700. post ... hope it is helpful for someone 😊 )

Well put Markus. Of course the server logs count the page requests - not the page loads -  a subtle but important difference.

What about the people like me? I don’t wait for a page to load because I already know where I want to go a click the link. So the page doesn’t “fully” load. GA has Conversion Goals where you can set up specific paths where you want the user to go to i,e index.php > contact.php > submit.php that way you track exactly where they go and that makes it a “conversion goal”. So technically I would be a visitor, yes a repeat but a visitor with a mission.

What about the people like me? I don’t wait for a page to load because I already know where I want to go a click the link. So the page doesn’t “fully” load. GA has Conversion Goals where you can set up specific paths where you want the user to go to i,e index.php > contact.php > submit.php that way you track exactly where they go and that makes it a “conversion goal”. So technically I would be a visitor, yes a repeat but a visitor with a mission.

Ok - this might seem a bit radical but set up two GA profiles - you have 10 in each account - one for the top of your page and one for the bottom. See what the difference is…

If you put your code in the footer you’re selling yourself short. All sorts of stuff can stop a visitor from showing up because anything in the site that delays the content loading is also delaying the loading of your footer, sometimes to the point it doesn’t get hit at all. Javascripts from other sites loading gadgets etc on your site will do this. in fact they’re notoriously the problem.

Id put your code as the first thing in the head of the page.

Also, GA is nowhere near accurate, and after a 90 day test i showed that it’s less accurate the busier the site is. I’ve got a site that gets over 2 million page views per day now. GA was horribly short on pageviews.

If you set up a log parser CORRECTLY you will get the only possible true stats. It’s not possible for any remote stats program to be accurate and they shouldn’t be used that way. They are great for tracking trends, and that’s how they should be viewed. There is no more accurate way to track stats than using your site logs. The problem is this isn’t always easy to get right. Using something like AWStats (which is free) works great, BUT you need to configure it to ignore false hits, ignore your hits and truly report JUST hits and pageviews.

The ideas I expressed above are based on a GA seminar. Of course: my fault not distinguishing between page requests and page loads.

A really accurate statistics is never possible due to a number of facts. Proxies might lead to miscounts for example, sometimes (especially on bad or busy connections), the request goes thru but the browser doesn’t receive all packets neccessary to render the page (blame the IP protocol, the ISP or whom soever), ... So, neither server logs nor GA or other monitoring/analytics services are able to deliver exact data.

But what is more important: The exact number of page requests/views isn’t business relevant at all. Its not the goal of a site to attract as much page impressions as possible at all cost (if it is yours, just add some free giveaways of cars made by some famous german car makers). That is where GA goals come into play - you can not only set goals (basically target URLs), but even add a (real or fictional) value to these goals. E.g. goals might be signups for a newsletter, requests for some additional information or a completed sale. And of course, the number of visitors not completing all steps to reach a goal is interesting - as are the URLs at which they leave the site. Of course, finding that data inside some server logs is very cumbersome - or needs some good tools.

All these tools - server-based or external like GA - only work with assumptions: When will a request from an IP be counted as a continuous visit, when is a session assumed to be ended, ... Your tool will never know if you read some text on the page for about 10 minutes or if you went to get some fresh coffee. Therefore, the pure statistics is just some smart marketing tool - but if you need information on where your site works and where not, you’ll need to digg deeper and the miscount of visits and page loads becomes irrelevant.

Okay - enough on this. Sorry for drifting away a bit.

Markus

almost everyone in my office runs FF with the noScript addon.  The noScript addon blocks Google analytics, if your website is technical it may effect your analytics.  You never can tell what the crazy users are going to do.

Well, for really accurate figures you need to process your server logs anyway, and even then there’s a lot open to interpretation. So, what I use Google Anylytics for, mainly, is trend analysis. Visits going up? Bounce rating staying low? That kind of thing. You’ll never get entirely accurate statistics, but it really does not matter in the long run. Having said that, in this day and age of ubiquitous AJAX, I don’t think too many people have turned off Javascript permanently.

Couple of questions, What’s FF?

My site targets a highly technical crown with lots of other competing sites out there.  I’ve noticed that an incredible majority of my readers come in via RSS.  Therefore my bounce rate is crazy high.  They come in, see what they need, then leave until there’s an update again.

Isn’t it interested that if you then target hihg-end users, you may get pinged for poor bounce rate.

I am also using a multi-page tag that accomplishes most of what I needed, but may screw the GA data.  It really screws with comments for some reason.  here’s the code

{if segment_4 == "" OR segment_4 == 'P0'}
{image}
{body}
{/if}

{multi_field="extended|page2|page3|page4|page5|page6|page7|page8|page9|page10"}
<div class=“paginate”>
{paginate}
(Page {current_page} of {total_pages} pages for this article {pagination_links})
{/paginate}</div> 

Also, on a side note, I have recently been given access to the Google Ad Manager Beta.  For some reason, there seems to be some conflict that cause it to not work at all.  Not sure if it’s EE, some type of javascript or whatever.  Even the simply tutorial they offer showed nothing.

All said, Google, between Analytics and Ad Manager is causing my site some grief.

FF = FireFox - NoScript is an add-on for that browser that allows to block or enable JavaScript (and other scripting) based on a domain or even page URL. Standard with NoScript activated in Firefox is to block JS from all domains not explicitly allowed. That way, GA can’t recognize a visit because the GA JS isn’t executed.

RSS is known to change the surfing behaviour of users. Highly technical users are more RSS savvy (and perhaps even using Firefox with NoScript more often).

But honestly, all that isn’t really a “problem” - as stated above, the number of page impressions isn’t a good goal anymore ... you wouldn’t get more business just by having a lower bounce rate ... it would perhaps only lead to more visitors browsing through your pages and not finding what they looked for. Therefore, qualified traffic (and users subscribing to your RSS fed are at least pre-qualified) and clearly defined conversion goals are king. And, as stated above, GA and other web statistics are great in monitoring trends, not tracking every single visit to a site.

What do you mean with “srew the GA data”?

Markus

I pay my writers based on the traffic they drive to the site and calculate the payments based upon Google Analytics (GA).

Google Analytics is fast becoming a standard with at least my advertisers in that they’d like to see the data.  We’re very open in our business and share that to contracted vendors.

My server stats (where this thread originated I believe), is showing numbers much, much larger.  I use AWStats and it’s claim is that it doesn’t count spiders, etc. 

Any other suggestions other than Google Analytics to track and pay my writers - as well as share with vendors as a “real” traffic number?

You find writers that allow you to pay them on the statistics that a JS solution is counting and that you are presenting to them? Wow ... congrats to you.
GA becoming a standard for statistics accepted by your advertisers? You’re my man ... I have some completely useless stuff here, seems you could sell that for me and we both make a fortune!

Honestly: All pay for view based actions I was involved in for sites with some serious traffic required external, proven data based on webbugs, tracking servers and other means. But for smaller sites, pay per view is a dead horse if you ask me. There simply is no “real” traffic number to trust in without involving some expensive external monitoring service. As long as your partners are okay with JS based statistics, just be happy. And hope that your authors aren’t manipulation the page impressions by reloading their own articles. AWStats is crap as well (or at least, one would need some serious analyzing package to generate reliable data from the raw server logs…) - it counts requests, not served impressions.

For example: try ruling out traffic counted by AWStats that comes from all sorts of spam bots (trackbacks, comments, email harvesters, ...) - they don’t identify themselfes as bots. Good luck - some sites have more bot traffic than real users, especially small sites. GA will ignore most of that traffic because the JS isn’t evaluated.

For me, your business model seems to be outdated since at least three years. Its simply not reliable. Most robust business models I see these days are either based on countable actions (sales, perhaps newsletter signups, in advertising pay per click ... with the huge problem of click-fraud) or based on timed or proportion scenarios. But thats not really related to the topic of this thread anymore, so I’ll shut up now.

Just my $.02
Markus

All good points. 

My market is a niche that I was a print publisher in for many years.  Folks know me and trust me for that.  That may explain a great deal.

For the most part, the big sponsorships I currently have are paying a flat rate for the year.  No traffic minimum believe it or not.  Apple, HP and Adobe are three of them, so they’re not small potatoes.

The payment scheme for writers make sense in that the are incentivized to write great articles and drive great amounts of traffic.  If there were an alternative means of tracking traffic to individual blogs within my site, I’d look into it.  We are an aggregate of blogs.  Strength in numbers….

There is a way to traffic every hit you have. Any log parser can do it. AWStats will always be leaps and bounds more accurate than ANY scripted resource.

Do yourself a favor, install a free app like awstats. Spend the time to configure it correctly. Then track your blogs with both. you’ll see immediately just how badly Google Analytics misses your numbers.

As was stated, use GA for what it’s good at. Trend analysis. But don’t ever expect a javascript, remote script to be even remotely accurate.

Also, as you mention your site is largely technical? You’re even more prone to be WAY off with GA because a very large portion of those people will be using FF with noscript. and you’ll never see a bit of their visits with GA, but you would with AWStats.

Hey all, I finally figured out the incredible discrepancy between my AWStats and my Google Analytics reporting data.

According to AWStats, 7 of the top 10 pages are RSS.  There is no Goggle Analytics code in the rss template.  I tried to add it and of course it won’t accept it.  Reviewing the AWStats reveals that a vast majority of users are using RSS.

So here’s the question:  Is there any way to place the GA javascript code on the RSS template?  If not for me, it seems GA is relatively useless as a real traffic tracker.