Discrepancy between StatCounter and SC4 Beta

[CFD Trader]

I installed Stat Counter late Sunday afternoon in one of my websites www.cfds.blogspot.com which is fed at the moment 60% from www.cfds.com and 40% from the search engines according to Google Analytics. To date I have only one full day of data, but decided to look at the Beta version after reading all the comments.

I installed it earlier this morning without any hitches and then started comparing the two sets of stats and noticed that ST4 displayed double the traffic. I then started playing and discovered that if I clicked the button on cfds.com to visit the blog the result in ST4 was an increase of any number between 2 and 9 to the total, but only 1 in the original version.
Visiting from another blogsite which has a direct link will produce 2 visits in ST4 against the 1 recorded in original StatCounter.

Another worrying discovery was that continual refreshing in ST4 would produce a single visit in the results but not in the original version.

I suspect there is some way to go before ST4 will be fully operational - good luck, the promise is there and will be a considerable improvement when fully debugged.

[CFD Trader]

As the day ages it would appear that for every visit recorded by StatCounter
records 7.8 visits.

I must say it works wonders for the stats, if only it were true.

[webmaster]

Thx for the feedback. The problem you are experiencing is due to code installed on your blog.

For example when I visit this page.

http://www.cfds.blogspot.com/

and look at the source code of the page; I see that the SC4 beta code is installed over 40 times!!! You need to remove all this code and replace it with the code just once.

[CFD Trader]

Many thanks for the reply. I had placed the SC4 code in the wrong place. When placed a line away from the original code neither worked but the SC4 is now performing without the duplications.

I can only ask what am I doing that is wrong when I add the ST4 code below the original and it freezes the reporting?:confused:

[Car Guy]

Hi

Are you saying it freezes the reporting of both counters, or just SC4?

SC4 is beta, it does lag or miss a day sometimes.

Richard

EDIT: I only see the SC4 code on your home page, you will not get complete stats.

[CFD Trader]

I removed the original StatCounter code so that I could check out the ST4, but was puzzled that with both codes it froze both sets of stats.

[ttaxi]

What I have been notice is that the visitors, some times improve as the logs, it looks that it count the visitors but not the logs for some visitors.

Is this possible?

Thanks

Baptista

[webado]

Sorry, Baptista, I don't understand what you are asking.

[CFD Trader]

After another adjustment last night all appears to be well this morning.

Many thanks for assistance.:-D

[ttaxi]

Sorry, Baptista, I don't understand what you are asking.

What I'm trying to say is that, sometimes I notice that the visitors increase but not the logs.

Some times I notice that there is new visitors but not logs for that new visitors.

Sorry my english.

Regards

Baptista

[webado]

Oh, ok. You mean the number of hits increases but not the total number of visitors.

Well sure, it's possible, if the same number of visitors performed more hits each.

If the visitors have cookies enabled, then they are recognized as being returning visitors, so no new visitor is involved. But the total hits will increase.

[Teresa7307]

I haven't received any visitors for a couple of hours. Just wondering if anyone else is experiencing this also.

[ttaxi]

Oh, ok. You mean the number of hits increases but not the total number of visitors.

Well sure, it's possible, if the same number of visitors performed more hits each.

If the visitors have cookies enabled, then they are recognized as being returning visitors, so no new visitor is involved. But the total hits will increase.

well is the other way the visitors increase but not the hits.

[webado]

You mean the cumulative total number of hits isn't going up?

Well webmaster did say SC4 was offline for some time. It will be on and off until it's stabilized.

[ttaxi]

You mean the cumulative total number of hits isn't going up?

Well webmaster did say SC4 was offline for some time. It will be on and off until it's stabilized.

Yes, some times there is new visitors but not new hits.

[ttaxi]

You mean the cumulative total number of hits isn't going up?

Well webmaster did say SC4 was offline for some time. It will be on and off until it's stabilized.

As I mention before there is visitors that dont make any logs.

This morniong at 9.55 I had 9 visitors and 10 logs, but in the logs i have visitors with 3 and 2 logs, so it means that there was visitors with no logs.
Sc4 is counting a lot much more then sc3, but not all the logs wet.

Baptista

[webmaster]

Hi Baptista,

If you click on the "Recent Pageload Activity" this shows the actual streaming raw activity on your website. It will show you how the Summary Stats match the logs.

The 'Visitor Paths' does some more interesting grouping and analysis that doesn't lend itself to matching the records versus the Summary Stats as well.

[ttaxi]

Hi Baptista,

If you click on the "Recent Pageload Activity" this shows the actual streaming raw activity on your website. It will show you how the Summary Stats match the logs.

The 'Visitor Paths' does some more interesting grouping and analysis that doesn't lend itself to matching the records versus the Summary Stats as well.

Thanks for your reply,
I can see there is some visitors that stayed 0 secounds and didn't log.

[webado]

Ok I think we are having a confusion in terms here.

If you SEE there are some visitors that stay 0 seconds THEN they must have been logged or you'd not have seen them. The log is called Recent Pageloads.

Don't look at Visitors paths and other "interpreted" reports until you understand what is in the log itself.

It has been said many times: to compute a visit length at least 2 pageloads mu be recorded from a particular IP address. This means that a visit length of 0 seconds is due to the visitor with THAT ip address having loaded one and only one page from your site and only done that once - and you will see that in the log (Recent Pageloads) there will exist only one hit from that Ip address.

This also means that a visitor with a variable IP address (like those from AOL) will most likely result in many "visitors" (i.e. different ip addresses) each with a single page view, each with 0 second visit.

[playgameswincash]

Hi there,

First of all thanks to Car Guy for your initial help :)

But... I am having discrepancy issues as well.

Last week i installed the SC4 code on my site (www.playgameswincash.com) in each of the 4 pages there. (I have google analytics there too for comparison).

For the first couple of days SC4 worked fine.

But for the past few days there is a discrepancy between the original code from SC and SC4. for example, for today SC says 8 visitors (i know sad...) and one of them returning visitor), but SC4 says 8 and all unique.
For yesterday SC shows 9 hits and SC4 shows 7.

Can anyone shed some light on the issue by looking at the sources code on the page? Is something wrong with the code i installed? Or is it internal issue from SC?

Thank you in advance for your help/advice.

[Car Guy]

Hi

Your code looks fine. SC4 counts have been off a bit for the last few days on some of my projects. Don't get too caught up in trying to "fix" anything, it's just what it is until they are done debugging it.

You should see my visit, IP starts with 75

Richard

[playgameswincash]

Will wait it out.
Thanks again - indeed was able to see your IP.

[Fulgorke]

SC4 missed several of the hits registered by SC3 this weekend and today!
Is it only me or are there more persons having this problem?:confused:

[Car Guy]

Not just you, for last several days SC4 has been way off.

A work in progress!

[Fulgorke]

Not just you, for last several days SC4 has been way off.

A work in progress!

Good to know, thx

[jtohline]

Yesterday my Beta page turn count was 1 greater than the original counter. Today it was greater by 2 about an hour ago.

[slobjones]

I've been running SC4 for a bit less than 24 hours, and I find it's recording about one-fifth the hits that are recorded by the original StatCounter code.

For example, todays stats show 124 pageloads recorded by the current version, and 24 by SC4.

Despite claims to the contrary, SC4 is still inadequate.

[webado]

Mine records a few more than sc3.

I would venture to say it's fallen victim to many of your visitors blocking its server but not blocking the regular one.

[slobjones]

Mine records a few more than sc3.

I would venture to say it's fallen victim to many of your visitors blocking its server but not blocking the regular one.
What do you mean by "its server," webado. Are you talking about your server? And why would SC4 be treated differently by my "visitors" than the current SC?

I can tell you that my PC is not blocking stats. I don't know about anyone else's, nor is that my business. It's your business to make the product work.

Your response reflects what I usually see on the SC boards -- a lazy and dismissive attitude.

What you should be doing is correcting SC4 so it properly records statistics.

[webado]

For the hundreds of thousands of projects it manages Statcounter has many servers.

The server your project is on is identified as a subdomain of Statcounter. Check the code you have and you will for the noscript portion (or the html-only version) the img tag has a url like c38.statcounter.com/counter.php?.....

Others have different numbers. So they are all different subdomains.

Since they are all different subdomains, any of them might be blocked by a user, but not all need be blocked.


The one project I have for sc4 is located on the server called c.statcounter.com . This may be blocked by some visitors, even while my regular counter on server c3.statcounter.com may not be blocked.


Oh and it's not my business to do anyhting. I am a moderator of this forum, I don't work for Statcounter.

There's nothing that Statcounter can do to prevent people who are overly concerned about security and privacy from blocking it. Nothing.

Did you forget however also that Sc4 is beta?
Or viceversa.

There's no telling with people's security and privacy settings and programs like Spybot what they may or may not block.

[CFD Trader]

Having started this thread, I thought a little positive data might be of interest.

Below are the reported figures for http://cfds.blogspot.com/ which has been idle for years and I re-vamped it and started posting again on January 18th. I started listing the relative results at the end of February and have listed them here in case they might assist the "de-buggers" - thanks for all your efforts.

March----------------SC3-------------------- SC4
1--------------------- 8 ------------------------- 8
2--------------------- 6 ------------------------- 7
3--------------------- 177 --------------------- 31
4--------------------- 291 --------------------- 143
5--------------------- 283 --------------------- 294
6--------------------- 264 --------------------- 276
7--------------------- 209 --------------------- 139
8--------------------- 18 ------------------------- 30
9--------------------- 57 ------------------------- 70
10--------------------- 98 --------------------- 139
11--------------------- 82 --------------------- 99
12--------------------- 72 --------------------- 84
13--------------------- 83 --------------------- 95
14--------------------- 265 --------------------- 288
15--------------------- 99 --------------------- 101
16--------------------- 68 --------------------- 82
17--------------------- 645 --------------------- 661
18--------------------- 1666 --------------------- 1723
19--------------------- 480 --------------------- 508

[FrankV]

To add to:

SC3 Page loads
Thursday......April 3rd 2008....258 So far
Wednesday...April 2nd 2008....124

SC4 Page loads
Thursday......April 3rd 2008....219So far
Wednesday...April 2nd 2008....109

[CFD Trader]

Blog Stats--------SC3---------------Beta SC4
------------------2008--------------2008
------------------Page ----Unique---Page-----Unique
------------------Loads----Visitors--Loads----Visitors
April
1--------T-------1504-----388------1503-----691
2--------W--------894-----203-------943----419
3--------T-------1257-----387------1215-----511
4--------F-------1720-----451------1717-----575
5--------S--------795-----273-------802-----329
6--------S--------251-----113-------294-----151
7--------M------1525------754------1542-----773
8--------T------1101------240------1070-----480 (up to 7pm)

I hope this info is useful

[whats on]

Hello wonderful People
Just popping in to say that all seems to be going well with my versions of 3 and 4 at this time.

There are still one or two links that I know have been hit that aren't registering but they were from me. There is no JS involved. The download links work well. They do register for me.

I think you have a winner. It really does make my picture of where my visitors go and how they utilise the site more clear.

Thank you

:)

[upsfeup]

My sc4 counter version just missed a hit.
Just to let you know that is still not perfect :P

[lbs_man]

Hi all

I just want to add my few pennies worth.

Since March 5th 2008, I have both SC3 and SC4 code on all the pages on my 3 main domains and since then the page views & unique visitor numbers are nearly always within 2% or each other (apart from one bad day about a week ago when it was about 15% out).

For a free service, I think that it is brilliant. The 'real time' status is amazing. A week or so ago we could see a chap viewing pages, then he called us and chatted for about 8 minutes, then he carried on browsing. Amazing to watch.

Anyway - Many Thanks to all at StatCounter and also thanks to all you hard working moderators.
lbs_man

NB - I am a relative novice and have only starting coding seriously in the past 6 months.

[webmaster]

Thanks for the feedback folks. We'd request that if you are testing SC3 vs SC4 it is only fair if you generate a new security code for SC3. You may not know about some pages where your StatCounter code has ended up on. By generating a new security code you can give SC3 and SC4 a fair test.

To generate a new security code you simply need to login to your account.

- Click the 'wrench icon' beside your SC3 project name
- Click the 'security code' link
- Choose the option to generate a new security code from the drop down list
- Hit submit
- Then click "install code" and follow the wizard to install your code again

At the moment for us SC4 is recording more traffic than SC3 for the projects we are managing.

[whats on]

Thanks for the feedback folks. We'd request that if you are testing SC3 vs SC4 it is only fair if you generate a new security code for SC3.
At the moment for us SC4 is recording more traffic than SC3 for the projects we are managing.


I was just popping in to say that SC 4 is recording more unique visitors (it has always had more page hits with the anchor/exitdownload stats etc) than SC 3 and the SC 4 code is not even on half of the sites pages at this time...

Then I noticed the statement above...

Do I need to reinstall my SC3 code on every page or only those pages with SC 4 to make this a fair run? Am I getting the "real stats" still with SC3?
At last count a few minutes ago SC 3 = 171 and SC 4 = 184.. remembering that the SC 4 code is NOT included on all pages yet this is something I will have to print out and compare and find where the differences lie if it is not just the Reinstall issue.

If some one could clarify I would appreciate it and I hope this info helps..

Cheers

Deb :)

[lbs_man]

We'd request that if you are testing SC3 vs SC4 it is only fair if you generate a new security code for SC3. You may not know about some pages where your StatCounter code has ended up on. By generating a new security code you can give SC3 and SC4 a fair test.


Hi Webmaster

Both my SC3 and SC4 codes are in my header which is accessed (php/included) by all pages. In my case do you still recommend a new SC3 code?

lbs_man

[webmaster]

Do I need to reinstall my SC3 code on every page or only those pages with SC 4 to make this a fair run? Am I getting the "real stats" still with SC3?
At last count a few minutes ago SC 3 = 171 and SC 4 = 184.. remembering that the SC 4 code is NOT included on all pages yet this is something I will have to print out and compare and find where the differences lie if it is not just the Reinstall issue.

For a fair test - yes! You need to reset your security code and reinstall your code on all pages.

The SC4 system should be even more reliable and faster loading than SC3. So it should pick up more hits than SC3 in a fair test.

[webmaster]

Hi Webmaster

Both my SC3 and SC4 codes are in my header which is accessed (php/included) by all pages. In my case do you still recommend a new SC3 code?

lbs_man

It would make it a fair test if you did, just in case your old SC3 code is cached on some pages around the web.

Aodhan

[GoddessWeb]

I have been running both SC3 and SC4 on two different sites almost since the beginning.
Discrepancies between the two come and go. I have reinstalled the code once since beginning.
It's been relatively stable for several weeks until the last week or so.
Nothing has been changed on these sites except plain text since the time when both SC were tracking correctly.

Currently SC3 is logging more hits than SC4. Some hits SC4 is missing are legitimate users, not bots.
On the one with little traffic, SC3 shows 4 hits, SC4 shows 2.
On the more heavily trafficked domain, SC3 shows 66, SC4 shows 47, a discrepancy of 19.
Yesterday on this domain the difference was 18.
Monthly totals: SC3 1349, SC4 1302, discrepancy of 47 hits.

Both of these sites have "no cache" settings and are not cached.

Solution?

[lbs_man]

I have been running both SC3 and SC4 .......
It's been relatively stable for several weeks until the last week or so......
Currently SC3 is logging more hits than SC4. Some hits SC4 is missing are legitimate users, not bots.


I absolutely agree with this.

My main domain has 100-300 page views per day. Yesterday the result was 84 on SC4 and 147 on SC3.

There does seem to be a serious problem with the Statcounter SC4 logging. I don't mind because we are told it is a beta program, but I think the webmaster needs to know.

lbs_man

[CFD Trader]

SC3
1479 542
1382 482

SC4
1478 658
1071 443

Only variation as you can see was in the page views.

[StatCounterJen]

Hi all,

Just a short mail to let you know how much we appreciate all your feedback - it really is invaluable to us.

SC4 dipped a little on Tueday and for part of Wednesday due to essential maintenance work - so we were expecting some reports of inconsistencies as we see above.

For Thusday 24 April onwards, SC4 should go back to reporting the same (or more!) than SC3.

Please let us know how the numbers are looking!

Thanks for your support - we couldn't do this with you!! :mrgreen:

[FrankV]

So far today April 24:
SC4 - 14
SC3 - 68

I wouldn't have reported this, but it is a large difference.

[travelwrite]

this is the third day now that SC4 counts are still about 100 lower than SC3 totals and across all projects.

Miss it!

Karen

[StatCounterJen]

Of course... I spoke too soon!

Further maintenance and testing work today (Thursday) has AGAIN disrupted the SC4 numbers...

Please do keep posting your results - we're not there yet...but we're getting there!!

[travelwrite]

Thanks Statcounter!!!

Happy in Mississauga

[hfsturges]

SC3 and SC4 are working just fine on my website. SC4 does count a little more hits consistently than SC3. I understand that this is normal.

[travelwrite]

I'm never sure if SC4 is down simply because it's being worked on OR if we should be letting you know when it stops working, as mine did at 9 a.m. EDT today.

Karen

[webmaster]

Hi travelwrite,

There were a few problems we were ironing out with the system today. Unfortunately there would have been some missed hits again today but the system should be back to processing hits again normally now.

Do keep us updated if you experience any more problems.

Aodhan

[southernwriter]

Good morning. I have both the original counter and the beta test installed on
http://www.lesiavalentine.com/chapterone.htm

This is the first time it's happened that I'm aware of, but this morning, there's a discrepancy in the stats. The beta version counts 1 less than the old version. This is not a high traffic site, so it's no big deal to me, but since you're testing, I thought you might want to know.

[southernwriter]

Hi, it's me, southernwriter, again. I just opened my stats page, and the discrepancy from yesterday? Gone. The count at http://www.lesiavalentine.com/chapterone.htm is 1 and 1, instead of 1 and 2 (as it appeared yesterday).

BUT it's now 1 and 2 for today. :confused:

[GoddessWeb]

All of my beta counters are off. The main one is off by 100 hits. As in, SC3 shows 114 hits, SC4 shows 14. The other two low-traffic SC4 counters are showing no hit at all, while their SC3 counterparts show 3 and 1 hits respectively.

[southernwriter]

Stats for today at http://www.lesiavalentine.com/chapterone.htm

2 and 0. ;-)

[ttaxi]

Did sc4 stoped???

[handashow]

I've had a discrepancy between the original stat counter and the beta almost every day since I've installed, but never very large.
Yesterday, one site 29/2, the other 17/3.
Did something change?

[has-sound]

My SC4 hasn't shown a hit since Tuesday, zero across the board for Wednesday, Thursday and Friday. My SC3 count (Unique Visitors) is Wednesday: 371, Thursday: 428 and Friday: 115.

[ttoomm]

Webmaster-

How long will SC4 be down?