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Why do Ghost Metrics data reports differ from Google Analytics and other analytics tools?

Often, you want to compare data from different web analytics tools, for example, comparing Ghost Metrics reports with Google Analytics reports, to see whether they are similar or if one is tracking more or less data than the other.

When you compare Google Analytics reports and metrics to the equivalent in Ghost Metrics, you should expect both reports to be very similar, with no more than a 5% or 10% difference for numbers of visits/sessions, pageviews, etc. (Except if your Google Analytics reports are sampled, as Ghost Metrics is always accurate and does not sample data).

When comparing Ghost Metrics reports to another web analytics tool, there are several aspects to consider that could explain why numbers differ between the analytics solutions:

  • DoNotTrack support: Ghost Metrics by default respects the DoNotTrack setting. If visitors have selected not to be tracked in their browser, Ghost Metrics will not collect information about them. If you suspect many users are using DoNotTrack, you can reach out to support to have them disable this feature. This feature works in the JavaScript tracker. When importing logs, all visitors and actions will be tracked, as DoNotTrack is not available in server log files.

  • Bots and Spiders tracking: By default Ghost Metrics uses a Javascript tracker which automatically only records “real” human activity and excludes all bot activity. This leads to more accurate reports. If you compare Ghost Metrics reports to Google Analytics and notice a large discrepancies (over 5%) you may try to disable bot tracking in GA. To do this in Google Analytics go to Admin settings and navigate to View Settings under the View panel. Find the checkbox “Exclude traffic from known bots and spiders” and select it. Then both Ghost Metrics and Google Analytics will exclude all bot traffic. (PS: Ghost Metrics can be configured to enable tracking of search engine bots).

  • Presence of JavaScript code tag: when comparing Javascript-based statistics (e.g. number of unique visitors), you have to make sure that both javascript tags are present on all pages you want to track. If you’re seeing some pages that are tracked in one tool but not the other, maybe you have forgotten to add one of the JavaScript tracking codes on some of your pages.

  • Position of JavaScript code tag: Place the Ghost Metrics tracking code at the end of the </head> tag in your pages.

  • Higher “Direct Entry” visits in Ghost Metrics: When tracking the acquisition source of visitors, Google Analytics stores and uses campaign data for up to 6 months and attributes subsequent direct entry visits to the original campaign acquisition source. (So Google Analytics will report a higher number of visits attributed to “Campaigns” because these visits used a campaign in the previous 6 months.)

  • Duplicate tracking: If you have embedded the standard Ghost Metrics tracking code in combination with the Ghost Metrics Tag Manager javascript code please ensure the Tag Manager does not contain a page view trigger as a page view is already being pushed by the standard tracking code, if the Tag Manager also contains a page view trigger this will cause twice the amount of page views in your Ghost Metrics reports.

  • Identifying Visitors: Ghost Metrics uses a javascript based tracker, and keeps count of unique visitors using a first party uuid cookie, as well as a visitor recognition heuristics algorithm (based on IP address and user settings: learn more). Some other tools only use cookies, only use IP, or a combination: we found that the way Ghost Metrics tracks visitors gives us excellent accuracy and avoids creating artificial visits.

  • Tracking method: Other services, which are using server logs for data analytics (such as AWStats, Webalizer, Analog, or any custom server-side data collection script) would record all traffic, including search bots or spam bots. When your Ghost Metrics numbers are much smaller than your other tool, check that you are comparing Ghost Metrics with a similar web analytics tool which can also exclude all bots and spam traffic like Ghost Metrics does.

  • Hits vs Visits: Log analyzers will typically report “hits”. Hits generally count all http requests to your websites: pages, images, css, javascript files, etc. Ghost Metrics reports page views, unique visitors, visits, etc. which are expected to be much less than the number of hits.

  • Record loaded page: When the Ghost Metrics javascript code is located at the end of the page, Ghost Metrics will only record page views for page that are finished loading. Log Analyzers would also record page requests that have been “cancelled”, e.g. when the user hits the Back button before the page is displayed.

  • IP addresses exclusions: Make sure to set up the same IP exclusion rules across both Ghost Metrics and other tools.

  • Ghost Metrics does not sample data: Unlike Google Analytics, Ghost Metrics shows 100% of tracked visits.

  • Ghost Metrics prevented tracking spam: Ghost Metrics Tracking Spam Prevention module, Ghost Metrics can be configured to automatically ban IPs after tracking a specified number of actions in a visit. It can also be configured to block or only allow requests from certain countries, block Cloud IPs, Headless browsers or server side libraries. If you have this configured on your Ghost Metrics instance, it will cause the reports to differ.

  • Ghost Metrics tracks site searches automatically: Ghost Metrics can automatically track internal site searches for your websites. This can result in some differences in the Pageviews between Google Analytics and Ghost Metrics as Site Searches are tracked as a unique action in Ghost Metrics and do not contribute to the total “Pageview” count.

  • Average Visit/Session Duration Variations: By utilizing the HeartBeat timer feature in Ghost Metrics, you can ensure accurate tracking of bounces and time spent on the last pages.

If you are experiencing large discrepancies in the data between Ghost Metrics and another tool, some of the reasons for this can be related to consent tools, where consent is not obtained or is granted for one script but not the other. Duplicate tracking mentioned above can also cause a large discrepancy with double page views occurring in Ghost Metrics, it's also important to confirm the JavaScript tracking code is embedded on all pages of your website. If you have multiple exclusions such as IP ranges configured in Ghost Metrics these also need to be duplicated in the other analytics tool, or vice versa. Sometimes the issue can be that one tool is actually tracking an additional sub domain resulting in increased traffic when compared to Ghost Metrics. The tracking settings of bots and spiders needs to be configured the same in both analytics tools, some software such as AWStats or Webalizer record all traffic including bots which can report considerably higher visitor numbers than the visits you are seeing in Ghost Metrics.

Conservative counting is definitely best – it makes your statistics more realistic on what you are trying to measure. Most analytics packages are used to measure relative upswings, we recommend using the same tool for all measurements and relative comparisons.