One of the people I write for had this WordPress plugin on his site that I hadn’t noticed until relatively recently, and I thought it would be interesting to run it at least for a little while to compare it to Google Analytics.
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It’s called Count Per Day, and it’s creator, I believe, must be German, since you initially will see German on the site, but if you scroll down you’ll see it in English as well. Anyway, what it does is give you all sorts of stats about your blog, similar to Analytics, except it’s real time. In other words, if I left the blog for 3 hours and came back to look at the stats, they’d be different, even if only slightly. Well, that’s assuming I had visitors of course.
I wanted to see if the numbers I got from Count Per Day would be much different than what I get from Analytics. Strange as it always seems to me, you get different numbers from different places even though they’re supposedly looking at the same thing. I stopped looking at the numbers from my host because they just seemed, well, overwhelming when compared to that Feedburner box you see on the right side there. Analytics seems to make more sense, but every once in awhile it goes wonky; no idea why.
Since I installed it on September 9th, I decided to do a comparison from that point. Since it’s a live plugin, I know the numbers won’t match totally, but if they’re close then it’s all good. Count Per Day, which I’m now going to call CPD, shows I’ve had 6,211 visitors since September 9th; Analytics says I’ve had 1,119. I’m thinking that’s a pretty drastic difference. CPD shows I had 516 visits yesterday, Sunday; Analytics says 80. Already this isn’t going all that well.
Let’s look at some individual posts. Both show that my post on cleavage is still my most visited post, but CPD says it’s been visited 845 times since the 9th, while Analytics says it’s been visited 460 times. After that there’s no agreement on the rest of the top 10 at all, and I mean which posts have been visited the most by whom.
Am I confused? Absolutely! But who do I believe, and what to make of it? Man, I wish I knew. My mind tends to believe Analytics more than CPD. I keep thinking if I were actually getting the number of visitors the plugin tells me I’m getting that I’d almost have to be generating more income from this blog than I do. At the very least I should have way more subscribers to my RSS feed than I have with those kinds of numbers.
I’m not sure how long I’ll keep the plugin, especially if I’m not believing the numbers. My ego loves them, but the logical part of my mind doesn’t trust them. If you want to give it a try and see if your numbers are closer to reality, go for it.
As I spend way too much time checking my stats (when I get tons of traffic I won’t have the time eh) I won’t give this a try. Especially if the differences are so far away from each other. May give me false impression about traffic and then I would just wonder why I still am getting the same amount of comments. Thanks for sharing as always good to know what’s on offer.
Patricia Perth Australia
There are lots of things like this, Patricia. And since it doesn’t cost any money to test, and it gives me things to talk about, you can live vicariously through me. lol
Its my first time here at your blog buddy.
Hmm, I think CPD counts all the visitors but analytics counts unique visitors? If that’s the case, it really reflects the different and drastic difference with the numbers given by analytics and CPD right?
But still, its just a mere conclusion of mine.
Hi Ron, welcome to the blog. You know, I just couldn’t really determine what CPD was counting, and that’s problematic in the long run. I have to say it looks pretty, though.
This is very useful plugin, as it shows summery information. If you try to use all the options of Google Analytics without custom reporting for sure you will be lost. I think this can help a lot for SEO and improve conversion.
Carl, we’ll just have to disagree on this one because I’m missing it. I don’t trust the numbers; I think this blog would be way more successful if those numbers were true.
Very cool Mitch. I’ve noticed oddness myself with analytics, and I don’t care too much for the WP stats plugins I have found. I’ll give this one a shot.. the screenshots look nice and informative at least so thanks for sharing.
No problem Aaron. I do have to admit that it looks pretty nice.
Hi there, i’m German, that’s right. 🙂
In most cases CPD will count LESS than other counter because it’s counts only 1 visitor (IP) per day per post.
Maybe your “problem” ist that many visitors hav blocked GA per Adblocker or something else. I too. So these visitors will only count of CPD not GA. Just an idea.
Thanks for popping in Tom, and for the confirmation on the German. lol
I don’t know that Adblocker blocks count numbers, though that’s possible. Actually, numbers from all sources never seem to quite match up, which is pretty odd to someone like me, a number cruncher. I’d love to see some kind of standard in the industry for how to count things like that. I will say that your program looks nice, as evidenced by the spreadsheet I put up.
Analytics doesnt work for users without javascript installed or who disabled it or even have javascript blocking programs like Tom said,so that might be a cause for the discrepancy.
If this plugin is gathering the data via server side code then it might be more accurate then GA, actually it had been demonstrated in the past that Google Analytics tend to display erroneous data.
I hadn’t heard that before, Alex. Then again, how many people actually disable javascript? I’m betting most people have never even heard of it! lol I might need to research Analytics a bit more, though, because I know it’s been wonky in the past; I even wrote a post to that effect: http://www.imjustsharing.com/google-analytics-goes-wonky/
Hi Mitch.
I’m one of those people who sometimes disables java and javascript. When I have limited time and want to do as much as possible, I frequently turn both of them off so I won’t be distracted.
In those cases, I would not show up on Google Analytics or any other statistics counter that requires javascript.
When it comes right down to it, the only stats I trust are the server stats on my account.
But, I admit that I’m not typical.
All the best,
JD
John, early on I did try turning off javascript, and I found that a lot of sites I visited often wouldn’t work without it. Too much trouble in my opinion so I turned it back on and I left it alone. That was many years ago, though; not sure if things are still that way. And no, there’s nothing typical about you. 😉
hello Mitch. I actually looked at GA for the first time last night and compared it to StatPress which is another plugin i have installed. I too am curious about this Count per day and want to d my own experiment and see what I uncover. I have had my blog exactly 1 month and GA said I had about 960 visitors in that period from 8/19-9/20. StatPress tells me I had 1016. Not too much of a difference compared to your that is major. But I am curious just as well.
I’ll be interested to see what your results look like. Course, if you write it in poetic form I might not understand it. lol
CPD is a LOA tool. 🙂
Oh no you didn’t! lol Never thought of it that way.
Glad to see you back, Dennis; I hope you’re feeling well. And my bounce rate has always been pretty high, but the time people stay on the site is pretty high also if I exclude that goofy cleavage post lol.
Dennis, we’ve had this conversation before. For instance, this post talks about counts, so I add a money counter. I wrote a series of posts on the topic of influence, which you probably missed since you weren’t subscribed; what kinds of products would you have suggested that I select that matched up with that? Overall, this is my style and my prerogative in highlighting products, which are actually meant to highlight the companies that sell those products because if someone clicks on the product and buys something else, I still make money from it.
That, plus we were talking numbers here and not sales, which, as I’ve always stated, I’m not as worried about on this blog as I am on some of my other sites.
Thanks for the article.
?? What Counter do most people like for WP?
I’ve been using “Count Per Day” for a year and loved it, because it counts visitors by their IP address. You actually know how many REAL & New Visitors you’re getting….besides yourself & friends.
But Count Per Day just Stopped working on 8 of my sights in September? suchs! And after activating & reativating–no go.
I wonder why it stopped working Gregory. I just added mine in September and it started working immediately. Weird.
Funny thing is, after google-ing the problem. I read that a LOT of others all had the samething happen after beginning of september, this year. How wierd?
the authors’ site mentions the complaints and says to Activate and REactivate the plugin….it DOESN’T work.
** in settings for the plugin: I cleaned the Database & RESET the counter. Now it works again. But lost my “Historical” data.
The plugin is great, though.
It even shows up under Widgets, and you can place it in the column and get it to display a nice little Counter& Users Online
You article got me thinking about NOT abandoning this plugin and trying another. This made me fix it.
I THANK YOU Sir
There’s a huge chance CPD is counting bot visits as well. I’ve tried them all and I’ve finally decided to settle with Google Analytics and WordPress.com Stats, The stats they provide are 90% – 99% similar 😉
I’m pretty much with you, Chuks. I don’t think I’ve even looked at CPD since I wrote about it.
I just stumbled on WP Slimstats and so installed it on my blog a few hours ago. I’ll be comparing the 24 hour day data with that of my Google Analytics and if it’s closer to Analytics than WordPress.com Stats, I’d have to stick with it 😉
Ha Ha is there maybe some kind of German math conversion you are overlooking?
Could be Susan; then again, Einstein was German, so it could be very correct.