The data reported here seems to be via two independent methods. In the case of this blog I use both Google Analytics and the built-in Statistics that is part of Blogger. I can see that there are far more visits recorded by Blogger that appear in my GA reports. This is also strange as I have told Blogger not to record my own visits, something that I previously did with GA but gave up as it used cookies and required more programming.
I am surmising that the discrepancies are due to visits from those that are suppressing Javascripts but I am not sure if Blogger excludes visits from spiders. On the later I would think that Blogger does suppress Googlebot as it is part of its own DNA so to speak. However, I do see that a newly posted entry gets a visit soon after posting and I assume that is the first scan by the robot and have observed that the entry can then be found when making a Google Search. This is an indication that the new page is in the Google index.
This is not a problem for me as the combination of the two tracking methods allows me to get a pretty good idea of who is visiting and what they are interested in. The additional information that I can get from Google Analytics is useful as I can see geographic location and time of access more readily, but this is just icing on the cake.
As one of the reasons for running a website and this blog were to understand the dynamics of all this it is of little consequence to me that there are these differences. However, it is an interesting point to note and is in keeping with the over-all trust of my sites. As I am decommissioning my Canadian website, I don't intend to renew the current hosting when it expires I am relying less and less on what I see in the Analytics reports. I am also migrating some of the content from my Canadian domain to a UK one, but that is getting only limited response (in compared to this blog) so I might just continue with this blog exclusively.
I am surmising that the discrepancies are due to visits from those that are suppressing Javascripts but I am not sure if Blogger excludes visits from spiders. On the later I would think that Blogger does suppress Googlebot as it is part of its own DNA so to speak. However, I do see that a newly posted entry gets a visit soon after posting and I assume that is the first scan by the robot and have observed that the entry can then be found when making a Google Search. This is an indication that the new page is in the Google index.
This is not a problem for me as the combination of the two tracking methods allows me to get a pretty good idea of who is visiting and what they are interested in. The additional information that I can get from Google Analytics is useful as I can see geographic location and time of access more readily, but this is just icing on the cake.
As one of the reasons for running a website and this blog were to understand the dynamics of all this it is of little consequence to me that there are these differences. However, it is an interesting point to note and is in keeping with the over-all trust of my sites. As I am decommissioning my Canadian website, I don't intend to renew the current hosting when it expires I am relying less and less on what I see in the Analytics reports. I am also migrating some of the content from my Canadian domain to a UK one, but that is getting only limited response (in compared to this blog) so I might just continue with this blog exclusively.
No comments:
Post a Comment