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Google Analytics vs. Urchin: A Clear Winner?


A client contacted us recently concerned that his traffic (according to Urchin) had dropped significantly in November of 2009. Since the drop, the Urchin has been reporting no more than 1 or 2 visitors per day. This 0-visitor week span has been pretty typical over the past 8 months:

Our first step? Install Google Analytics. I talk a lot about Google Analytics and how intuitive it is; plus I’m much more comfortable using it than Urchin. Lo and behold, Google Analytics had a very different traffic report than Urchin:

An interesting difference, n’est pas? It seems Urchin just stopped tracking data. I attempted to do some research on the occurence with no luck. Has anyone had a similar experience?

Nicki Hicks
Stumped by Urchin

This entry was posted on Thursday, July 8th, 2010 at 12:03 pm and is filed under Analytics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

  • http://www.carlnatale.com Carl Natale

    We used to use Urchin and had similar issues. Traffic would be humming along nicely and suddenly drop off significantly. This would continue for 10 to 20 days then jump back up.

    We suspected that Urchin improved its filtering of robots and spiders. The return to higher numbers maybe came from new robots?

    Which makes me wonder if Google Analytics filters robot traffic.

    Note these are just guesses.

  • http://www.flyte.biz Nicki

    Carl,

    Thanks for the comment!

    Google Analytics reportedly does filter out spiders, but who knows for sure? Thanks for sharing your experience, glad my client wasn’t the only one!


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