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I have Google Analytics on a Rails web app.

Lately traffic has picked up, and I get about 1000 page views per hour as seen from Rails. But GA only picks up 25-100 per day, and I need help understanding this.

I know GA doesn't pick up some kinds of traffic, like web crawlers, and my own traffic. What else does it deliberately ignore?

Is there a way I can recognize these categories in my Rails code?

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  • It sounds like your Google Analytics tracking snippet isn't installed on all your pages. Maybe you just put it on your home page? – Stephen Ostermiller♦ Mar 25 '17 at 18:45
  • I only have 2 major pages and 5-10 minor ones, and I get GA numbers on all of them. – Lars P Mar 25 '17 at 20:15
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GA "deliberately ignores" anything that doesn't run it's javascript tracking snippet, and a list of common crawlers. By default it would track your own visits.

Look at the reported browser of the visits with your Rails code. Good crawlers self-identify, and bad crawlers tend to not identify or use out-of-date versions.

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  • Yeah, that explains it. A quick check shows that out of 174 requests, 119 are from DotBot, 45 from AhrefsBot and 2 from Googlebot and bingbot each, leaving only 1 I'm sure is a real human. – Lars P Mar 30 '17 at 5:07

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