Comparison of counters Google Analytics, Rambler Top100 and Mail

Finally, they got around to sorting out the features of attendance counters, or rather, to the basic data that they give out. And more precisely - how the data of different counters correspond to each other.

Compared:
- Google Analytics
- Rambler Top100
- Mail


Methods

We take a regular corporate site with average traffic (what kind of site, for obvious reasons, I do not indicate). We put GA, Rambler and Mail counters on it (we omit LiveInternet for now, since it is not often used on corporate sites). It is clear that the counters are on all pages of the site, that is, they are on an equal footing (the location in the page code is also the same).

We only compare data on attendance (visitors, hits), as the most accessible data, even in the case of closed statistics.


Results

The data collected for the period from February 26 to April 1 (5 weeks) are as follows.

Google Analytics :


Rambler Top100 :


Mail :



Ok. We are trying to understand what is what.

Help GA gives an exhaustive answer:

• Absolutely unique visitors - how many real visitors (computers with a unique cookie) opened the site in a given period of time.
• Visitors are absolutely unique visitors per day, summed up by given days.
• Visits - the number of sessions (timeout no more than 30 minutes).
• Page views are hits, of course.

The Rambler Help is not so verbose and gives a definition only for hits and hosts:

• Hits - the number of user hits on the site pages.
• Hosts - the number of unique IP addresses of computers from which the pages of the site were accessed.

Help Mail gives the following information:

• The visitor is a unique cookie. The same thing as a completely unique visitor with GA, only users with cookies disabled (4% according to global HotLog statistics) do not count.
• Hosts - the number of unique IP addresses of computers from which the pages of the site were accessed for a given period of time.
• New - the number of new (from the beginning of the calendar month) unique IP-addresses of computers from which the pages of the site were accessed. From this definition, by the way, it follows that if you look at the statistics by month, then "hosts" = "new".
• Hit - it’s a hit everywhere. Here, however, Mail indicates that the hits of some bots do not count.

So, what data can be equated between counters:

• Absolutely Unique Visitors (GA) = Visitors (Mail) . Mail’s experimental data differ from GA indicators by about 5%, mainly downward, which can be explained by Mail’s lack of users without cookies and robots.
• Hits (GA) = Hits (Mail) . In practice, again, however, with a slight correction of –5%. For some reason, Rambler gives 20-25% less hits - why ???

Judging by the numbers, Visitors (Rambler) = Visitors (GA) with an amendment of -5-10%, that is, this is not the number of unique visitors for the specified period, but the sum of unique visitors by days. Generally speaking, this indicator is completely useless, since it does not reflect either the number of real visitors or the number of their visits.

Of the useful data , GA Visits can also be noted , from which you can determine the frequency of users visiting the site. All other indicators (the Rambler and Mail hosts, as well as the New Mail hosts) are absolutely useless trash.


conclusions

• Google Analytics - rules :)
• Mail - counts visitors and hits more or less normally.
• Rambler - full of crap. Its data can be used only for relative comparison of site traffic.

There still remains the question of how to convert Rambler data into the desired data for unique visitors and hits. I don’t see any other options besides building a proportion with the indicators of another site (of the same subject) with installed Rambler + Mail or GA counters ...

By the way, if anyone can add a comparison with the LiveInternet counter to the topic, it will be very cool!