Question

Comparing google analytics results to one&one hosting monthly statics shows a huge discrepancy.

For last month:
Google shows 1046 visits.
One&one stats show 15304 unique visits.

The google code is in the footer which appears on every page.

I’m aware ga only works with js enabled but to assume that many non js users???

Answer 1

Google Analytics is a good indicator of how many humans are visiting your website.

Here are some things to check:

1. how many bots are in your monthly stats? You can usually find something that says User-Agent in your stats page. GoogleBot, Slurp, msnbot & others will be visiting every page on your site.
2. that you’ve read Google Analytics’ definition of a visit.
3. that you have read what your statistics provider means by unique visit. Does that mean unique visitor, page view or something else?

Raw hits on servers can be misleading for a number of reasons..

1. If you have external style sheets & JavaScript etc, they could be counted as a hit in the webserver log
2. RSS feed readers will periodically update without being asked to by a human