Analytics Help

[scagnt83]

Ok. As some of you might have noticed I got a website off the ground recently. It is a huge work in progress but I feel its getting there slowly but surely (I am still working on aesthetics).

Thanks to all that post here, as this is an entirely foreign project for me... I now understand why so many people sub this kind of thing out!

Here is my question:
I am using wordpress.org and have Cpanel through my host.
I have also set up a google analytics account.

Here is the thing, all 3 of them show different site stats for the same days!!!???
My WP dashboard says 4 visits yesterday.
Cpanel says 15
And Google Analytics says 3

So whats up with this?

Is there a plugin that shows google analytics info on my WP dashboard?

Are there any other analytics plugins you guys recommend for WP?

 

[Josh]

I like statcounter. You can get a free account and a free plug-in at statcounter plug-in for wordpress. If you want more storage space you can buy it and it's super cheap, but the free one goes pretty far, for 5k entries it's only $5/month and you can export it to keep it as long as you want.

 

[scagnt83]

So why would the three that I have show different stats for the same day?

 

[Josh]

So why would the three that I have show different stats for the same day?

It could be a number of reasons. Different visitors like spiders may not register with some, others might show them. Tough to say without knowing more details such as where the code is and stuff like that.

 

[Guest]

Your probably never going g to find anything 100% accurate. My guess is analytics and WordPress Are counting only unique visitors and panel is adding in your views of the site

 

[Josh]

I would trust the analytics over the other two. cPanel is great, but it's going to be very basic. If ask.com, yahoo, google, etc all stop by it might count those as visitors, but they're all bogus. Analytics might be blocking you and WP might not know the difference. That's a complete WAG, but it would explain everything.

Statcounter generally gives me the most specific information about each pageload so that I know where it is, where it's coming from, and although it might not have reporting that's as clean, it does give me a pretty good idea of what's going on with things like that.

 

[valdet]

Google Analytics will not track bots and your visitors who have turned off javascript.

 

[somarco]

This plugin will track bots (unless you tell it not to). Also gives other useful info like IP address in case you want to blacklist visitors.

Visitor Maps and Who's Online - Wordpress Plugin PHP Script - Long Beach Weather

 

[Cory]

There are alot of free tools out there with some limitations, but if you only pay for one thing... I would say sign up for seomoz and subscribe to their blog. Sounds like things are going well... good luck!

 

[Dot Com]

I am using wordpress.org and have Cpanel through my host.
I have also set up a google analytics account.

Webalizer stats via CPanel can conflict with Google Analytics. While they offer a code that attempts to bypass the problem, it doesn't seem to have much of an effect.

You're likely to see better data with Google Analytics, but a lower traffic count. Then, with CPanel, you'll see higher traffic counts, but the data isn't as informative.

The important thing is not to necessarily focus on how many visitors that you're getting, but what those visitors are doing. What's the bounce rate, most/least visited pages, time per visit, etc.