Site Analysis: Which one to trust and why?

I've always had trouble in deciding which ... analystic tool to trust.

BTW first and update on my situation. For the short term (at least) I've decided to go the paid advertising route. I see many sites with around the same traffic, doing the same thing.

www.fakeheadphones.com

We've designed a new, more attractive blog. I'm sure you'll agree, it looks better.

http://blog.fakeheadphones.com/ - we haven't officially launch this yet, but you can have a look. tell me what you think.

Analysing

From google analytics to sites like compare.com, no two analytics tools match up. So when promoting my site for the purpose of selling advertising space, who's info do i go by.

For example, one tool says i'm getting around 1,500-2,000 visits per per day with 250,000 page views per month. GA says traffic is in the hundreds per day, but confirms the same amount of monthly page views??? It's very confusing:(

I've always wondered about the difference between AW Stats and GA. Does GA not count the bots and spiders? Could that explain large differences? Can one configure their browser to keep GA from gathering info from them? I'm sure someone here knows the skinny on this subject.

As to which one to use to sell advertising, I would think most people would trust GA.

Hmm... Which stats method can you give the ad buyer access to, so they can see for themselves what the stats say?

I'm not sure perfect accuracy is the key issue, as like you say, no two stats programs come up with the same numbers.

But, you can say something like...

Quote:

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"Here are the stats we base our ad rates on. Here's where you can login and see these stats. We will be charging you X per page view, as defined by this stats program. Last month this system reported X page views, so you should expect a bill of Y."

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Something like that?

Scrap that comment about google being right when it comes to the forum stats. GA is telling me I've had around 5,000 PV this month, other stats including my own forum stats are saying that i get around 5,000 PV per day! Given the amount of traffic i have on at any one time, i'd say the forum stats are more accurate.

So in short, for my blog, both the blog stats and GA stats are about the same (spam bots or no spam bots). For the forum, GA stats are way off.

if the stats are going to be wrong for me, then they'll be wrong for anyone looking to place ads on the site.

Having said that, for some reason my Alexa ranking has dropped by over 100,000 in one day. Ouch!

Hey Matthew, may I throw another suggestion in as well? If you are looking for something to demonstrate traffic to a prospective ad buyer - why not give them both sets of data? They can make the decision (and it may show you have nothing to hide).

On that tangent, I've used Compete.com as well, even though they are more North American-centric they give a good baseline to compare against other competitor sites (i.e. other blogs in your niche).

HTH

Another suggestion I would add:

Page views and traffic are two different variables. Page views measures how many pages on your site were viewed in total by all your visitors. Traffic measures how many visitors came to your site.

Also, I've found Google Analytics, though not the most accurate in the world, is more accurate than other stat tools because it doesn't measure search engine spider and bot visits, while other tools do. That's why you will find a much lower number with Google Analytics.