Considering that GA code is included just right after SiteCatalyst code, simple logic will tell us that for a high traffic website, GA should report less number of PVs. However it is consistently the opposite.

That’s why I was wondering which can the reason behind this discrepancy, and confirm if differences between the tools themselves can be the cause.

Thanks,

Jose

Pageview metrics are pretty standard in terms of definition and methodology so I doubt this would account for a large difference. If the difference is large, please ping over the URL of a site in question and I’ll take a quick look.

This is indeed a very interesting post. I’ve been looking for this kind of comparisons for a while.

It happens I have a comparison of my own. I’ve noticed that in general the number of Page Views tracked by Google Analytics is consistently higher than the one reported by Omniture SiteCatalyst for a group of pages tagged with both tracking codes. I have seen this pattern in multiple websites, even when the GA tracking code is placed after the one of SiteCatalyst.

I wonder why is this happening?

- Is it because of any major technology difference used by the two tools? Which is the difference?

- Is GA making an asynchronous call while SiteCatalyst is waiting for the page to load completely or waiting from the tracking server to reply before counting the page view?

- Or is it only because differences in the definition Google and Omniture have of a Page View? In this case which are the differences?

Thanks,

Jose

Providing a best practise implementation of GA is actually how my business makes its money. With confidence in the data, you can really go places with experimenting and optimising.

I find the product is considered good enough that clients wish to invest in its understanding. Once that is in place, implementation project follow which leads onto consulting and myself acting as the agent of change (Jez – I sound like Obama!). Anyhow its a great business model – collect and report data for free, invest in the knowledge and the know-how…

For Alexa, the sample size is small (I have never met anyone with the Alexa toolbar installed), very US centric (though maybe that suits you), and heavily biased towards the webmaster community (hardly your average web user).

Good luck with your endeavours, though I hope you find more enlightened clients…