How many people are visiting your website?
KJD Freelance provides clients with two methods for track website visitors: IP address tracking and Google Analytics (cookies). These two methods can be used separately or together (they will not interfere with each other) and will provide you with valuable information about the number of visitors on your website, e.g., how visitors are interacting with your website and develop strategies for how to improve your site. However, if you compare the data provided by the two methods, you will notice that IP address tracking and Google Analytics do not give you the same results. Because the two methods track website visitors in different ways, they will provide you with complementary information.
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Websites developed by KJD Freelance offer clients free IP address tracking. Every physical location will have an IP address that is provided by their internet service provider and associated with the internet router. This means that if you use one computer at one location to view the website using three different web browsers (Chrome, Firefox and Internet Explorer), you will be considered one “unique user” because you are accessing the site from one device at one location. However, if you move to a second physical location, you will be considered as a “new user”. i.e., IP addresses track the device at a given location, so each location is a unique user. It is also possible for your internet service provider to change the IP address associated with your router (i.e., use a “dynamic IP address”). If your IP address changes, you will be considered a “new user” by the IP address tracking system even if your physical location has not changed. IP address tracking will also track things like bots (i.e., computers, not real people) that access your website (e.g., the Google bot might access your site multiple times per day, and spam bots might also visit your site).
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Google Analytics uses cookies to track website visitors. A cookie is a small piece of data that is stored by a website in your web browser. In general, if you use one computer at one location to view the website using three different web browsers (Chrome, Firefox and Internet Explorer), you will be considered three “unique users” because you are accessing the site from three web browsers. However, if you use the same web browser and computer to view the site from three different physical locations, you will be considered one “unique user”. i.e., cookies track the web browsers, so each web browser is a unique user. It is also possible for a user to have cookies “turned off” (i.e., Javascript is not enabled on their web browser) they will not be tracked using this method. This method of tracking excludes bots, including the Google bots.
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Why do IP tracking and Google Analytics give different results?
Because the two methods track visitors in different ways, they will give you different results. In general, IP address tracking will overestimate the number of visitors (because it includes bots) and Google Analytics will underestimate the number of visitors (because some people will have cookies turned off). The actual number of visitors will likely be somewhere in between the two numbers. However, it is useful to review both types of tracking because they can provide you with complementary information. For example, Google Analytics provides detailed information about demographics, website traffic flow, time spent on individual pages and entrance/exit pages.