GA Benchmarking: sum of sessions by channel vs total number provided

[seomozinator]

Hello.

There is a huge difference in benchmark provided total amount of sessions and number of sessions if I add them up by channels:Screenshot

If I manually add number of sessions by channel i get 187+114+59+69+231+121+168+225=1174 However,report says 227. That's MORE THAN 5 TIMES difference.

Does anybody know what's happening?

If not, are there other free tools, providing some benchmark reports?Thanks!

[iSTORM-New-Media]

No problem I looked at Google's documentation for benchmark reporting and they didn't go in to how their benchmarking system works unfortunately.

[seomozinator]

Thanks!It took me some time to convert your english into my brain's english, but now I understand what's what.

[iSTORM-New-Media]

Your stats are on the left. 178 vs 227 (your total sessions are 178). So the total does add up for your data.

As for the sample data, there's 2 possibilities I think:

1. It's all samples and averages. It's grabbing sample data based on your industry category, region and traffic volume. It's not necessary using the exact same data set for Total, Social, Direct, Organic, Referral, etc. Which is why they don't add up. Google collects a lot more data on overall traffic numbers than they do on say, email referrals (different sample sizes, different averages).

2. It's not an average at all. The report is to measure your channel volume against a benchmark. Google never said it was a benchmark average. The could be determining the benchmark based on some other equation.

There's definitely some other tools that could give you some benchmark reports. Like SimilarWeb, Alexa, I'm sure there are others some Mozzers can list.