Lies, damned lies, and statistics
Or “Buh-bye Google Analytics”.
As most of the commentary on my previous post about some statistics from this site (as reported by Google Analytics), the figures seemed… wrong.
Even though the Google Analytics code is included on every page I serve, the two obvious causes were:
Seeing as I have full access to my server logs, I decided to go directly to the proverbial horses mouth and see how the numbers work out from there.
The results are interesting to say the least.
Note: These statistics are purely for the same period – January 2008 up to the date of the this post. This means there may be some discrepancy between the GA figures in my other post and this one.
MPB (Most Popular Browser)
Bit of a difference, isn’t there?
Operating Systems
Hmm. Some confusion there.
…and the moral of the story is:
Look before you…
No, wait, too many cooks…
That’s not right. It’s never work with animals, children, or a third party statistics package that relies on JavaScript. Especially when you have access to your own logs. So the real moral is don’t be lazy. Here endeth the lesson.
Target Market?
Cartoon courtesy of Hugh MacLeod.
It would seem my assumptions about the target market for this site are a bit off.
I skim through my report from Google Analytics every day or so to observe traffic, but I had a bit of a closer look today and noticed something interesting: Safari is the most popular browser to view this site.
Here are some of the more pertinent figures:
look good