What is the difference between awstats and google analytics

This means that if a user loads your site but doesn't click another link for 31 minutes, Webalizer logs that single visit twice. It also lumps traffic from search engine spiders in with human traffic, further inflating the numbers. Like Webalizer, AWStats produces its data using raw server logs, and as a result it is subject to the same pros and cons.

The cutoff point for new visits is 60 minutes, however, so AWStats gives slightly lower traffic estimates than Webalizer.

However, it is superior over Webalizer in the amount of data it displays and the presentation of that data. In addition to visits, page views, hits and bandwidth, AWStats also displays metrics such as referring sites and which search engines are sending you traffic.

Google Analytics is the most popular traffic analysis package. It has a huge suite of visualization options and data manipulation tools, including goal and event tracking, visitor path tracking and more control over the date ranges under display, to name but a few.

However, it does have downsides: it tends to underestimate traffic slightly, cannot track visitors who use computers with JavaScript turned off, and has a learning curve before you can get the most out of it. Latest News and Updates on Your Services. Sign in. Forgot your password? Get help. Password recovery. AWStats vs. AWStats in cPanel. Data and statistics generated from records in the web server log. Google Analytics data and statistics. Analytics tracking JS code.

Madlena Metodieva Madlena is our super-support-guru. Madlena's SuperPower is that she can explain even the most complicated technologies in plain language. Notify of. Save my data name, email, website to a cookie in this browser to automatically fill in the form for next comment.

These cookies are only used to comment on this site. I agree that the personal data I provide will be processed for the publication of the comments and I am aware of the Mandatory Information on the Rights of Individuals for the Protection of Personal Data.

Inline Feedbacks. Load More Comments. Most read. Progress In Online Sales — Infographics Online store with Shopiko — one year later infographic Recent Posts. Free Shipping or Discounted Price? These automated requests are done by bots, computer programs that automatically surf the web. Often these bots have a specific task, like indexing a website for search engine listing.

Most bots are identified by their originating IP-address or so-called UserAgent a sort of identification text which states the origin of the bot; like "GoogleBot". Most bots are not included in AWStats visits, but are specified in a separate listing. Unfortunately not all bots behave nicely. Some of them are working for hackers to find potential security weaknesses. Others, like some search engine indexation robots, behave like humans to test if the website shows the same page to both humans and bots.

Serving different content based on user agent is a bad practice used by stupid websites to manipulate search engine ranking. AWStats tries to recognise bot behaviour by taking into account the sequence and speed of page requests like a normal, healthy human, should not be able to read more than two pages per second.

But, this cannot prevent some bots to successfully disguise themselves as human, causing AWStats to count them along. Instead of running software on the server like AWStats, Google Analytics works by executing code JavaScript on the device of the visitor. Depending on how the Analtyics JavaScript is integrated, the measurement is often delayed because it takes some time to load JavaScript. Sometimes it only starts after the entire page including images and fonts has completely finished loading.

People that leave the page before it is entirely loaded, or people that have JavaScript disabled, are therefore not measured. Because Google Analytics requires JavaScript, most bots are not measured because it is hard for bots to simulate a JavaScript enabled browser.

Because of the privacy concerns with regard to Google Analytics, some people actively block the JavaScript used by Google Analytics. There are browser plugins and ad blockers that do this automatically, without requiring any technical knowledge of the user. Another clever web developer used a purpose built server setup to find out how many people block Google Analytics. Both the unit of measurement and the place where the measurement is performed cause the differences in statistics by Google Analytics and AWStats.

Bots included, AWStats counts too much, while Google Analytics counts to little because of problems with JavaScript loading and blocking. But in the end it doesn't really matter as you should use these statistic programs mainly to analyse relative performance. Consistent inaccuracies in absolute numbers do not really influence answers to questions like these:.

If you really want to know who is visiting your website, you should really consider asking the visitor to identify him or herself. That is way more accurate and polite!