As well as transmitting information to the Google server, the tracking code sets a first party cookie (providing cookies are enabled in the browser) on each visitor’s computer. This cookie stores additional anonymous information that allows Google Analytics to determine such factors as:
By regularly reviewing the historical visitation, activity and behavior trends of visitors to our websites, we can better understand how people are really interacting with our site, and make informed, strategic and results-focused marketing decisions.
Privacy networks can also mask users’ locations, which create inaccuracies in geographical data.
All of these factors can prevent some visitors and activity from being tracking, leaving some gaps in the data.
With this in mind, it is important to understand that while Google Analytics data isn’t 100% thorough and accurate, it can be the best understanding we have about our websites’ visitation and activity.
So rather than thinking of it as specificallywhat has occurred on the website, it provides valuable information about website trends, by using data sampling.
The practice of selecting a subset of data from your traffic and reporting on the trends detected in that sample set. Sampling is widely used in statistical analysis because analyzing a subset of data gives similar results to an analysis of a complete data set, but can produce these results with a smaller a computational burden and a reduced processing time.
Website platforms that allow you to build and host websites on their server (rather than you selecting your own independent hosting), such as WordPress.com, Weebly, Wix and Squarespace, offer their own website visitor statistics, which often varies from that provided by Google Analytics. This is due to a different tracking method.
This data is generated based on the number of impressions – or how many times the pages are loaded and viewed – and page refreshes are counted as new visits or views. This is why these statistics often show a higher number of “visitors” than Google Analytics.