Do you over count your website visitors?
A recent study by Red Eye has found that most website statistics applications could be over counting their visitors by as much as 7.5 times.
Red Eye took two major websites that required visitors to log in by a user name and password and then compared the results of other common visitor counting methods against the number of visitors that logged in. As Red Eye knew the exact number of visitors who logged in, they could then make some valid tests against other methods of identifying visitors.
The results were astounding, the most common method used (the combination of the visitor’s IP address and browser) over counted the number of unique visitors to the websites by 7.5 times. Even tracking cookies were found to over count the number of visitors, but by a considerably lessor margin.
As our customers will attest, Panalysis has always stressed that web statistics is not an accurate science and the results should always be compared over time using the same methodology. This report further reinforces our approach of using a tracking cookie delivered from your website as the most accessible and cost effective method to track visitors.
We recommend three analytics products all of which are capable of using a tracking cookie. These are Urchin, Google Analytics & ClickTracks.
For a free initial assessment of your website statistics requirements, please contact us.
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