Google Analytics showing different traffic levels

  • Resolved jonnyvaughan

    (@jonnyvaughan)


    8 years, 7 months ago

    Hi,

    We’ve been running a split test for a month. The plugin reports we have a 50/50 split in traffic to the two variations (~2,100 visits each). Google Analytics however reports that variation A has received ~2,900 but variation B has only received ~900.

    I can understand the difference between what’s considered a session/visit between the two systems, but the wildly different traffic levels reported by GA is of concern.

    Is there a simple explanation?

    Thanks & otherwise plugin working well 🙂

    https://wordpress.org/plugins/simple-page-tester/

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)
  • Plugin Author Josh Kohlbach

    (@jkohlbach)

    8 years, 7 months ago

    Hi jonnyvaughan,

    This is most likely due to random traffic from bots or GA spam (it’s a growing problem).

    We track a visit when a page is fully loaded, however if a bot is hitting your GA (usually called referral spam) then this can cause a big variance as the page isn’t actually loaded and hence we don’t record the view.

    The other thing that can effect this is the setting to show the same variation to users. This is why we have different stats for page view and for visitors.

    Hope this helps!

    Thread Starter jonnyvaughan

    (@jonnyvaughan)

    8 years, 7 months ago

    Thanks for the reply and explanation. We are seeing referral spam in GA.

    The explanation of how & when you track a visit with the plugin make sense and gives me the confidence we can rely on the stats there rather than GA for split testing purposes.

    This would be a good topic for your FAQ.

    Jonny

Viewing 2 replies - 1 through 2 (of 2 total)
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