I’ve lost 90% of my website traffic in the past week!
There’s a great plugin for WordPress called WordPress Stats which measures website traffic for sites running WordPress, it’s a free download and quite possibly one of the best plugins for the popular blogging platform but it’s far from perfect so how do you avoid a panic in the boardroom? Easy, have a backup plan.
WordPress Stats
The WordPress system is a fantastic platform and WordPress Stats is a strong, robust, professional tool for measuring website traffic and search engine results although I have to admit that I’ve found it a little unreliable at times, so when I began to see a crippling loss of traffic this week I didn’t panic.
The first thing I did was took a look at my comment counts over the past few days compared to my traffic report, considering WP Stats showed a 90% drop in traffic you would expect an equal decrease in the number of people posting to my blog but in fact there was a 20% increase over previous weeks so … it was time to investigate.
Google Analytics
In addition to running WP Stats, I also run Google Analyics, a free robust tool provided by Google for Web Masters to track statistical changes in their website. I’m a strong believer in the measure twice, cut once philosophy and when I build websites I take double checking things very seriously. My friend Mike’s got a great expression for it, he’s an old school accountant type and he often tells me that he’s a belt and suspenders man, implying that keeping your pants up is important enough that he’d rather be extra safe than extra sorry. Taking a look at my Google statistics, although not precisely for the same time period (Google reports with a one day delay compared to WordPress Stats) the graph shows no noticeable decline for the past few days.
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Both Google Analytics and WP Stats rely on something called JavaScript to load external scripts which are hosted on a third party web server, basically you’re at the mercy of somebody else’s computer for your data which means that errors are bound to happen. To ensure you’re capable of reporting accurate statists you need to be able to confirm your traffic stats, simply picking the best of the two reports isn’t appropriate (unfortunately) so before I can get too excited about not experiencing a traffic loss, I need to confirm my data.
Google AdSense
The Google AdSense server tracks ad impressions on my website, it’s used to help calculate my earnings but also helps me verify statistics when there is an error so by logging into the Google AdSense server I can get a rough idea of how many page loads I’ve received on a given day or over time. Upon reviewing my advertising impressions over this period of time, I learnt that I server 1,100% more ads than WP-Stats reported as visits. Obviously there was a glitch of some sort, which I can now report to dozens of clients whom I manage web properties for, to ensure they are aware of the error.
Webalizer
While not everybody runs AdSense, and those statistics are only for page loads with ads (and sometimes multiple ads per page), most web site servers also have a free utility called Webalizer built in.
Webalizer is ‘an old school’ statistics package which looks at the physical data logs of a web hosting account and generates data based on those numbers, as a final confirmation of the WP-Stats hiccup, I also take a quick look at the graphics my web server can feed me to confirm the validity of the data before I react to the data presented in any single statistics package.
Conclusion
While WP-Stats is a great tool for providing relatively fast data for analysis of your WordPress website, business owners should ensure they have invested the time and training in Google Analytics and a second backup package to ensure the data they’re reviewing is accurate.
We’ve experienced the same thing Christopher. Some analytic s solutions just do not cut it all the time!
Joe’s last blog post..Innovative Golf Lifestyle at Horn Rapids, Richland, WA
So far I only depending on google analytics. This looks like a good additional wordpress plugin.
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good point chris ! I only use google analytics and webalizer. I like google analytics because you can create custom segmentations and reports. I have improved hits on my site based on the data from the reports and articles in your site. I will check out the wordpress plugin pretty soon.
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i use Google analytic to check traffic on my site.i think it is best tool to check traffic on site.otherwise you can use awstats.
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Stats are important, but I think a lot of people go to far with it. Sometimes you just get so much information that you can’t do anything with it. I’m fine using awstats. Gets the job done.
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Sometimes that drop in stats is indicative of a bigger problem.
I actually did lose 90% of my website traffic last week. The reason? Firstly my WordPress-based website was hacked; secondly, Google noticed hidden spam links on my pages and removed my site from their index. Suddenly I had no more referrals from Google.
Fortunately I’d set up a free Google Webmaster Tools account. I received an email from Google telling me what had happened, warning me my site had been hacked, and giving me a form to fill in for my website to be reconsidered.
I reinstalled WordPress (a very quick task these days), filled in Google’s form and a few days later normal service was restored.
Now my web stats are back to normal but if I hadn’t used Webmaster Tools it might have taken longer to fix.
Jason King’s last blog post..Competition to build a nonprofit website in a day
There’s a great, ongoing post on traffic falling of a cliff here: http://econsultancy.com/blog/3244-econsultancy-site-migration-and-seo-impact-the-story-so-far
malcolm coles’s last blog post..4.01pm – the best time to tweet if you want to be noticed
By the way, what’s happened to your top commentator numbers this time?!? are they just random???
malcolm coles’s last blog post..4.01pm – the best time to tweet if you want to be noticed
I review both Google analytics and Awstat, provide by my hosting company. The two database are always different. However, both give similar trending information. I think that we should not take it for granted that the numbers are accurate.. they are at the best only an estimation
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Way to stay calm Chris. I would have freaked out if I saw the traffic go down like that.
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@Malcolm, the top commentors plugin (not written by me) appears to reset itself every month and to be frank … I’m not 100% sure about the results some days. I’m in the process of writting my own version of the tool with a few additional features for my own websites and most likely to be released as a plugin.
for me i use statpress plugin for wordpress to track my traffic in fast way , but i’m also with Google analytic to get the all time traffic . but today i face a problem that no one used my feed to enter my blog ” i just made a blog and i always expect much feed readers visit me ” . but i think it is a plugin trouble ” .
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@christopher. Ah, that explains it. I think resetting each month is probably a good idea (or we’d never catch up with the tooth whitening bloke!). Maybe the plugin owner should change the heading to say ‘this month’ to make it clearer (hint for developing yours!). Cheers.
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Backup plans are always good. So far I have been sticking to analytics, as I know no comparable free tool, if someones does, tell me :) I dislike the fact that you give so much information to google for free, they are collecting everything and sometimes it’s scary.
I’d really freak out if I see something like that in my stats…
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I also use Google for all my numbers, but after reading this I really need to keep a closer eye on it!
you can recover a majority of your lost visitors simply by taking the time to create some customized, user friendly error pages.Creating your own custom error pages is well worth the time and effort, as they will enable you to recover an unlimited number of your visitors. If you follow this step by step guide, you can have your pages up and running in no time.
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Thank you for the warning!It is so kind of you.But I think everything will be OK,and your website traffic will be recovered and multiplied.
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Great rundown of the benefits of using two trackers. I already use Analytics on my site but I think it’s time to add some “suspenders”. I think using two trackers would definitely give you a clearer picture of how traffic really is.
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Always better to double check things as alot of things can have an effect on an analyze. Think I will look for another “reliable” analyzer to use along with google..
I am having some problems with this plugin. Have anyone else come across an error?
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Sitemeter is also a pretty good tool if live stats is important to you. But Analytics wipes out all the other competition, especially when you can connect it do AdSense!
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I also have noticed that different stats scripts/servers gives different statistics, which I have get used now. I pay attention to the general trend not the exact figures now. If the bars keep going up I keep my smile:)
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I already passed out from same problems with my site. But i started link building on that site, and now it is in ranking and i got back traffic on my site.
Sometimes there is problems occur in any Analytics too, Analytics is just a tool to keep track your traffics, if you noticed your traffics have gone down for 1 or 2 days, it doesn’t matter, as long as your sales still go on, your money still flows in, that’s all! :D
Regards,
Lee
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Here is a tip about Google Analytics, you can select current day, and be able to view the stats for the day. It may not be 100% real time, but from what I’ve noticed it shows most of the day stats, which removes the “having to wait” 24 hours to see the stats deal.
Oh… and it seems like you have a good idea there with having more than one set of data for stats. I may have to consider that.
Till then,
Jean
I’ve tried several other domain names with Validrank analzing tools, but seems mine is the only domain name registered during the vietnam war. lol
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It pays to have many backups and other source of information, specially in online world.
Just like having a plan B in case plan A fails or doesn’t give much details.
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We’re lucky to have so many high quality analytics tools theses days. Anyone remember when we had to look at server logs to “guesstimate” how many people were visiting?
I think I’m going to start using two trackers too. I also heard that Analytics doesn’t track iframe traffic properly, so maybe that’s another reason to use two.
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I use WP-Stats and AWstats. I get quite different information regarding the blog traffic which at times puzzles me. However, overall the stats are consistent and give me enough.
I only allow myself to look once a week because I can really waste time on really minute things that don’t change anything other than the fact that I no longer have time to do more useful things! LOL
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I really enjoyed reading you blog. I am always looking for new information because as the old saying goes “Knowledge is power”