Why we shouldn't use AWstats to measure marketing efforts?
-
and what are the disadvantages of awstats compared to Google Analytics?
-
I think the simple answer to this one is that Google Analytics is simply better. It provides way more functionality and the ability to actually track conversions, funnels and a whole lot more. AWStats gives you raw data almost, but Google Analytics allows you to make sense of it.
-
I use both AWStats and Analytics. I actually find the unique visits , hits,page views to be more accurate on AWstats than Google. However Google can provide more in depth analysis which is actually more useful. I also think that Google Analytics is heavily effected by the EU cookie directive, as when this arrived I noticed a drop in Analytics figures. For example page views on AWstats for one client shows 1000 people where google Analytics shows 600. We know that the AWstats figures are more accurate from the responses from the example page. However the 600 we can drill down the data to find where else the users visited and also how long etc... So AWstats in my view are for the headline figures and Analytics are for the analysts and number crunchers.
-
Pretty much agreed with Nakul and the reason is that AWstats might not provide you the tons and tons of data those Google Analytics posses in it.
Obviously you can use it technically as there is no harm in it but if you compare GA with AWStats there is no way you can compare!
-
You can. It's just that Free Tools like GA, provide you a lot more data and reporting that AWStats can't. Still, there's no reason for you not to use AWStats if that serves your needs and that's all your care about in terms of basic daily/monthly reporting.
-
But why we shouldn't use it for measuring marketing efforts?
-
Awstats, back in those days worked wonders. One advantage it has is that it's Server Side, which is crunching Raw Log Files. Other then that, GA and similar Analytics are much more advanced today and provide an insane amount of data and reporting. You can do Week over Week, Month Over Month, Year Over Year kinds of analysis, and other custom reporting, which you can't do with AWstats and alike.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
How do I create a segment that shows me all pages using a certain keyword? But nothing that doesn't have that keyword?
There must be an easy answer to this, but I can't seem to find it. All I want to do is create a segment in Google Analytics that shows all pages and search strings with "orthopaedics" in the title, with pageviews, uniques etc. If I simply navigate to "All Pages" in Google Analytics and then click Advanced Filters and do an Include Page Contains "orthopaedics" it works just fine. (See attached Screen Shot) But when I try to recreate this as a segment, it pulls in all other pages the users visited before arriving on the orthopaedics page I want to include, which I don't want. I can manually exclude each URL I don't want, but this is tedious and I feel there must be a simpler method I'm just missing. At the end of the day, I'm trying to create a list of every page and dynamically created query string that includes the word "orthopaedics" to say doctor X, your orthopaedics section generated X views, and here's a list of the pages. Mm6YTKa
Reporting & Analytics | | Patrick_at_Nebraska_Medicine0 -
Should I use sessions or unique visitors to work out my ecommerce conversion rate?
Hi all First question here but I've been lingering in the shadows for a while. As part of my companies digital marketing plan for the next financial year we are looking at benchmarking against certain KPIs. At the moment I simply report our conversion rate as Google Analytics displays it. I was incorrectly under the impression that it was reported as unique visits / total orders but I've now realised it's sessions / total orders. At my company we have quite a few repeat purchasers. So, is it best that we stick to the sessions / total orders conversion rate? My understanding is multiple sessions from the same visitor would all count towards this conversion rate and because we have repeat purchasers these wouldn't be captured under the unique visits / total orders method? It's almost as if every session we would have to consider that we have an opportunity to convert. The flip side of this is that on some of our higher margin products customers may visit multiple times before making a purchase. I should probably add that I'll be benchmarking data based on averages from the 1st April - 31st of March which is a financial year in the UK. The other KPI we will be benchmarking against is visitors. Should we change this to sessions if we will be benchmarking conversion rate using the sessions formula? This could help with continuity and could also help to reveal whether our planned content marketing efforts are engaging users. I hope this makes sense and thanks for reading and offering advice in advance. Joe
Reporting & Analytics | | joe-ainswoth1 -
How to Track Button Clicks as Events in Universal Analytic using New Interface of GTM?
Hello Experts, How to Track Button Clicks as Events in Universal Analytic using New Interface of GTM? Also is there anything code we have to do on website also to track buttons? Sorry to say request please don't just share any post, please give specific answer or share very relevant post. Your input is really very valuable to me. Regards, Mitesh
Reporting & Analytics | | bkmitesh0 -
What's the problem with this code for Google Analytics
Hello, I'm using this code in my thank you page to track ecommerce sales in GA. The problem that I'm having is that in the google event the _trackPageview doesn't register the proper page but puts the url of the ecommerce website. The transaction is properly tracked. Any ideas of what could be the issue looking at this code? Maybe there could be other code could be causing the problem? Thanks a lot.
Reporting & Analytics | | nagar0 -
Using advance segments or primary dimensions?
Hi guys, I haven't played around with advance segments enough to know the answer to this, so looking for some help. What I want to track is a keyword through the whole analytics, so I created an advance segment for "KEYWORD". This segment is Include - Keyword - "KEYWORD". Now when I remove the advance segment and do the following: Traffic Sources - Organic - Primary Dimension - Keyword - "KEYWORD" The amounts of visits differ a lot. I'm guessing this has to do with sessions? Looking for a clarification on this.
Reporting & Analytics | | William.Lau0 -
Which one should I be using 301 redirects
Hiya guys, I have a little problem, not sure which one I should be using, for 301, be easy on me I've not dealt with this before. So we have http://www.talknightlife.co.uk and I've done redirects for http://talknightlife.co.uk to http://www.talknightlife.co.uk host http://www.talknightlife.sheffieldspeedcameras.co.uk to http://www.talknightlife.co.uk Because my website is purely a forum and in the canonical error from the optimisation tool is showing 301 canonical = http://www.talknightlife.co.uk/forum.php should I be redirecting that to http://www.talknightlife.co.uk or the other way round, or just leave it ? I'm a little confused Cheers in advanced for your help guys
Reporting & Analytics | | Lukescotty0 -
What factors does the Keyword Difficulty Tool measure?
Hi Guys I am new to this community and finding loads of informative stuff here. The keyword difficulty tool looks very interesting. I think google keyword tool competetion field is based on PPC competetion? Will i be right in saying that the moz keyword difficulty tool measures top 10 ranking pages, their age, backlinks etc?
Reporting & Analytics | | SamBuck0
