How can the website statistics reported on the Google Analytics differ from what our other site statistics report (i.e. Awstats, etc…)?
First, even if two different statistic packages were given the same information, they could parse the files differently. And, with the nature of software, glitches do occur. But differing website statistics go much deeper. There is a difference between what a web server collects and what it sends out or reports to a browser. Website statistics are a cummulation of information based on the HTTP header information that is sent by a web server with every page requested. A server can be configured to collect different HTTP header information than it does to deliver HTTP header to a browser when responding to a page request. What that means is that your site statistics package on your server (such as Awstats) can only parse the data that your server has been configured to collect (aka the data in your raw log files). Web servers can be configured to collect specific pieces of header information. Yours might only collect some things. Google Analytics is setup to collect the HTTP header infor
