Signs Social Media Data Discrepancy Analytics Logics & Solutions

“Google Analytics gives me a monthly traffic figure of 1076 visitors. StatCounter.com says it is 1080 and my web hosting service provider ’1and1.co.uk’ says it is 1594 and has detailed analysis (similar to Google) to support its total. I am very confused who is right and how such big variation occurs?”- Ron

We are fond of going through such problems when we test our website traffic with different analytical tools. No need to wonder when you face such problem when dealing with the click and traffic ratio of big brands facebook, Linkedin and Google Analytics. I had an opportunity to experience such variations when I was dealing with the click to traffic ratio of facebook and Google Analytics. The ratio of click to traffic ratio of the website was having the difference of 70%.

I tested the same by using different Analytics tool like Statcounter and still the problem persisted and the problem became even more critical as with Statcountet the click to traffic ratio gets enlarged to 85%. I conceited my attempt of r&d and tried to test with some other areas as well. But being cheeky to all such Analytics tools I removed all such Analytics code from the website and decided to research in my own Google Analytics tab once again.

I find some more Sections where these traffic May Get Scattered-

Before I move ahead let me clear you the tabs where you must check the traffic sources aswell before reaching t any conclusion.
1. Referral Traffic
2. Not Set Traffic Counts

You may get search engine sponsored traffic adding up into the Referral traffic section sometime and sometime the traffic source becomes -
You must check whether you have got any raise in the amount of referral traffic / not set section. If yes you must re-breathe and get sure that overall visitors are reaching to your website but its its not get tracked. You must be happy that somehow your investment is leading to the traffic.
I was also happy at the moment but still the problem was much more similar the overall variation was near bout 60%. I wrote to Google and they come-up with their preplanned theoretical concept that variations are normal behavior and I should not worry about that and some other logics that you may easily catch on the web.

Google Resources-

• how to track non-AdWords campaigns in Analytics, please refer http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=55464

• The most common differences are caused by differences in tracking methods, terminology, and account settings.

For more information on why there can be differences, please refer http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=55614

• You may refer http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=75129 for information on how to check your code.

Common Reasons to understand Data Discrepancy in Google Analytics

• Click and traffic are 2 different units, don’t merge these two concepts together

• Make sure that your web-pages must have Google Analytics Tracking code.

• When handling the Adwords campaign must enable auto-tagging

• If you’ve disabled autotagging, make sure that you have manually tagged your destination URLs with campaign tracking variables. Otherwise, visits will be marked as “Google Organic” instead of “Google CPC.”

• Avoid to use old urchin and Google Analytics on 1 webpage

• Check whether your filters are not abandoning the traffic flow

• The user browser which is not supporting the Javascript are likely to show 0 addition in the traffic count.

Looking into the data

You must have the information about how different analytics tool work and perform so that you should have better understanding about the tracking terminologies but still I would suggest to ideally put web analytics tool on your website.
Using 2 tools just complicates reports and makes the reporting and analysis much more critical in many subtle and sub optimal ways. “One “switch” commonly occurs is the shift from fighting the good fight of getting the organization to use data to bickering about data not matching, having to do multiple set of coding for campaigns (the page tagging work itself is trivial) and so on and so forth.-
In a nutshell the efforts become all about data and not the quest for insights. Avinash Kaushik

There is no tool in the market which fulfill all the criterias mentioned above. You will definately identify certain variations in the Tracking tool figures as they have different criterias of analyzing in pulling over the reports.