Google Analytics vs Zopim stats are different

Question

On my website I run Google Analytics and I also run Zopim. Zopim is providing very different figures than Google (more hits). Which one should I believe? Why would there be a difference?

Answer 1

There are lots of reasons why the numbers differ between analytics tools. Here's a post from Clint Eagar of Omniture on why there are discrepancies, but the most important point is this:

Trend is king when analyzing web analytics data. More important than squabbling over a ten percent difference in how Google Analytics or Omniture reports a visitor you should instead be questioning: How many visits to do I have this week compared to last? How are different referring domains driving conversions over time?

Ultimately the differences between analytics vendors is just noise and you should never (did I say never?) attempt reconciliation.

• http://www.orangesoda.com/blog/how-to-reconcile-differences-in-web-stats/

For more information, here's the official Google stance on the topic:

• http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=55614

Answer 2

The most likely answer is that not all your pages are correctly setup to use Google Analytics, in which case the Zopim guide may help.

The most likely alternative is that Zopim is counting something as a page hit that Google Analytics doesn't accept - perhaps the difference between counting partial ajax refreshes or not?