 |
| Picture via Mara Burkes Creative |
I don’t know about you guys, but for the longest time I was always baffled about the website statistics on my blog. I use Blogger as my platform and there is a stats section that gives a rundown of your site’s stats from pageviews today through pageviews in all-time history. Meanwhile once I signed up for Google Analytics I immediately noticed a trend. My Blogger pageviews were consistently higher than my pageviews through Google Analytics. I decided I needed to get to the bottom of it because I didn’t know which one was accurate. Here is what I found out:
#1: You’re skewing your pageviews yourself:
Blogger accounts for the pageviews of your own viewing. This happens when you’re editing a page and going back and forth throughout your site. A quick fix to prevent Blogger from counting your own pageviews is to head to the stats tab and simply click “Manage tracking your own pageviews.” From there you can opt out of pageveiw tracking. Google adds a cookie to your computer that tells Blogger not to track you.
#2: What about previewing the post?
Long story short, Blogger is probably tracking any previewing of posts as a pageview because of the title. On the other hand, Google Analytics is smart enough to tell the difference and not count it.
#3: Bots that crawl your site:
Um what? Yeah that is exactly what I thought when I was learning about all this jazz. To put it simply, Google has bots that crawl your site automatically. These bots do anything from index to SEO to spamming and guess what, Blogger counts these bots as pageviews while Google Analytics does not.
Which do I trust?
If you want a more accurate representation of the traffic coming to your blog go with Google Analytics. You can learn everything about your audience from their geographic location to what interests them. However, if you are just starting with blogging, stick to the stats on your blogging platform. Just remember that they probably aren’t 100% accurate!
xoxo
Olivia
I too use blogger and I too have been confused about this. How do I switch to Google analytics? I plan to start putting ads on my page but I'd like an accurate view count before I do. Thanks for sharing
This is a great post, Olivia! I rely on Google Analytics but never really thought about the difference between the two types of stats!
Rachel | http://www.seashellsandsparkles.com
Such a good post, I wondered this when I first joined Google Analytics as well. Happy to see my stats getting up there on GA though because it was so discouraging at first!
Erin, Attention to Darling
http://www.attentiontodarling.com
Great post! Kisses!
·Alas de Angel·
Thanks for sharing Olivia, I always find this side of blogging to be complicated!
Happy Weekend,
Katelyn
This is so helpful. For the longest time I didn't get why the numbers were different.
maretteflora.com
This is so helpful. For the longest time I didn't get why the numbers were different.
maretteflora.com
I went through the same confusion when I first started blogging!!! It's always disappointing to realize that most of the views come from yourself hahaha but it's definitely better to have a more realistic view of statistics. Great tips!
I think once a week I explain to someone that the stats on your own blog are NOT accurate! great post!
Great post! It is so important to stick with Google analytics because when brands start looking at you that's what they'll want to see.
Google analytics is wrong also.
Google analytics is wrong also.
Google Analytics is so much more accurate than Blogger but I feel like there's no tracking system that's 100% correct which sucks =[
xoxo, Jenny
Thanks for the lesson! I still have SO much to learn about Google Analytics and what everything means. I use Squarespace and I'm still confused on what all the analytics mean, lol 🙂
It can be a hard realization for people who think their views are one thing and realize they're not once switching to GA, but GA is really more accurate, so trust it! Google just has a monopoly on everything basically. haha!
Coming Up Roses