[I’ve got a WordPress website, which is hosted on Hostgator. When I log in to my Hostgator account and view the Awstats statistics for the site, the numbers are different than what I get in Google Analytics. For example, the number of UVs yesterday is almost 4 times higher in Awstats than in Analytics. How come this is so? And which stats should I trust?]
In the IT world, there are technical terms that define certain metrics. One of those terms is used for defining a browser session on a web server. Since the term “session” isn’t well understood by users outside of the industry, analytic packages often go with a “user-friendly” term of “unique visits”.
Technically, the term “visit” might refer to a session, or it may refer to a page view. It typically depends on the context in which the term is used. If it is in relation to an individual page then it usually refers to a page view and when referring to sitewide stats it usually refers to a web browser session. You must refer to the documentation provided by your analytics package for clarification.
