Insights not correct

[tnoskoguy]

My weebly insights shows traffic for my website that is completely different to both google analytics and Add this (who both show me identical figures)

According to google analytics and add this, my traffic dropped significantly recently, but according to weebly it has grown..... I'd love to believe the weebly figures but they just don't look realistic. 

[Adam7]

This is caused by the different ways in which we track vs what Google or AddThis does. We track by IP address rather than by cookies (which can notoriously undercount). This means that we'll track hits from people who are blocking cookies in addition to non-human visitors like search engine bots and spiders.

[Magoo]

Hi Adam,

I was wondering why, when you state the quote below regarding measuring website traffic, Weebly has now adopted the very method of measuring traffic that you say 'notoriously undercount[s]'? Why has Weebly done this when their new method is hopelessly corrupted by adblockers and disabled cookies?

'We track by IP address rather than by cookies (which can notoriously undercount)'

[Adam7]

Tracking by cookies has become the industry standard, and I personally think that it makes more sense for your data to be limited to just your human visitors (even if it can't get them all) than to count bots, spiders, and website pre-fetchers which don't really tell you anything about what your human visitors are doing.

[Magoo]

Hi Adam,

Strange you only think that now that Weebly has changed it's system to the one you used to say 'notoriously undercount[s]'.

Most people either use adblockers or disable cookies for security reasons these days (I know I do), which renders Weebly's traffic count redundant, or shall we just stick with your definition of 'notoriously undercount[s]'. In addition to this the 'Compare Your Data' graph is so bad it doesn't even load most of the time.

[tnoskoguy]

Can I jump back in as it was me who asked this questions originally....

The reason I asked was that at the time Weebly was showing my website visitors at around 25,000 a week. My google analytics and addthis tracking was showing around 7000 a week.

It's a massive difference. 

Now the amounts are almost the same, google showing at around 1400 per week, and weebly the same. 

My turnover has increased this year so I believe my traffic is up, not down by the 80% that happened since GDPR but now there's actually no way to know the actual traffic. 

[Adam7]

Thanks for posting, @tnoskoguy. @NJRTF posted a screenshot the other day comparing his current Weebly stats to Google Analytics as well, and they were pretty close. I think in his case his Weebly numbers were slightly higher if I remember correctly.

[JOE22]

Hi Adam,

I'm shocked that Weebly would make such a huge change to Insights numbers without much explanation to us.

We would need to know what changed and how this is going to measure better so we can restore confidence back in Weebly's Insight numbers. 

If I had missed an announcement from Weebly on this, please direct me to it so I can get more informed.

Thanks

[KnurruM]

Ever thought of people who have active sponsor contracts based on the previouw stats ???
How am i going to tell the advertisers 75% off my views are gone ???

[BJ5]

I would think if you had sponsor contracts based off of site analytics that you would be using Google Analytics to provide specific demographic data to sponsors. Not trying to argue your situation with you, I'm just surprised that a sponsor wouldn't want to see something like GA since everyone uses it and it's easy to compare.

[sasha60]

This method gives me irrelevant information

[newmusicsocial]

Weebly tracking is useless. For example on wednesday i posted a blog which over 2 days had 71 facebook likes and yet showed 38 unique visits. not everyone likes either.