Statistics from Piwik and my other web analytics tool (log analyzer, webalizer or javascript based) are different, why?
There could be a various number of reasons why Piwik numbers are different from your other web analytics solution. • Tracking Method: Piwik is using a javascript based tracker, and keeps count of unique visitors with a tracking cookie. Logs analyzers softwares (AWStats, Webalizer, Analog, etc.) or custom server-side script would record all traffic including bots and generally rely on the IP address and user agent to determine unique visitors, which is less accurate. • Hits vs Visits: Log analyzers softwares will typically report “hits”. Hits generally count all http requests to your websites: pages, images, css, javascript files, etc. Piwik reports page views, unique visitors, visits, etc. which are expected to be much less than the number of hits. • Record loaded page: when the Piwik javascript code is located at the end of the page, Piwik will only record page views for page that are finished loading. Log Analyzers would also record page requests that have been “cancelled”, eg. when
