Google Analytics vs AWstats log file analysis – the differences
Google Analytics provides decent functionality and data, but how much more value is there when compared to a log file analysis tool like AWstats and what are the benefits or using one versus the other?
AWstats
AWstats (Advanced Web Statistics) is an open source log analyzer written in Perl that can use a variety of log formats and runs on a variety of operating systems. AWstats was designed with the main purpose to inform system administrators rather than website business owners, web marketers and web analysts, which basically means that making sense of AWstats data for marketing/business purposes is not very straightforward. Moreover, the reports are extremely basic and just spit out raw data which doesn’t tell you an awful lot about the website dynamics and stats that matter to improve your efforts.
AWstats processes the log files that most web servers churn out by default and organizes the data in a bunch of basic reports. This tool was designed for the needs of “Way back when…” so it’ll be of limited use. One major difference between data collection methods of AWstats and GA, is that the first logs data on the physical webserver, whereas GA logs data on the site itself and stores the information in a remote location (on Google’s servers).
Should you compare figures of AWstats and GA like with like, you’ll notice that AWstats figures will be much larger. An important reason for this is the fact that AWstats detects search engine bots that access (“crawl”) your website to learn more about its content, link structure etc., whereas GA can’t detect this type of traffic. These days, crawl stats are far less important than back in the day, and information on how search engine bots see your website is readily available from the major search engines, once you sign up to look into these services. Examples are Google Webmaster tools and Yahoo! Site Explorer.
Google Analytics
Whereas AWstats is purely a log analysis tool, Google Analytics is intended to be a measure of business (website) performance and provides you with statistics that you , as a business person, will want to see. With current web analytics tools (of which Google Analytics is a big player today) we’re moving into a grey area between website statistics on one hand and business intelligence on the other. As web analytics as a study develops the needs for business intelligence rather than raw webstat data, the major web analytics tools will follow.
Google Analytics depends on cookies and is a little less accurate in data volume than AWstats. Cookies are small files that are automatically stored by websites visited on the user’s computer, which usually logs basic stuff like user preferences, country of origin etc. (to be able to provide users with a better experience – i.e. the next time they use the site, a particular language can be loaded straight away without having the user select their preferences from scratch). Such cookies depend on javascript (as part of your website’s page code) and roughly 5% of internet users worldwide have opted to disable the use of javascript (mostly out of fear for malicious javascript that unfortunately exists online and can be the cause of virus infection for unprotected computers).
Those visitors to your site that have disabled javascript will not be tracked by GA. Considering this is a small amount of visitors, and data accuracy is not the holy grail of web analytics, this flaw has been generally accepted and is no longer a serious consideration for business owners choosing a web analytics tool. By far most web analytics tools use so-called “page tagging”, similar to Google Analytics.
The main differences between AWstats log file analysis and Google Analytics
- The data is inevitably different, caused by the different tracking methods used. Because AWstats tracks website stats from the web server, it picks up server calls from search engine crawlers and that in itself makes a huge difference in your stats (depending on the size and popularity of your site). In this day and age, crawl statistics are of very limited value – this should not be a reason not to go for Google Analytics as to most, 9/10 times this info is insignificant
- AWstats is meant for network administrators and engineers, whilst Google Analytics is made for business owners, marketers and analysts – business focused. A lot of the stats that AWstats provides are purely meant to inform about website functionality and finding out more about the technologies used by the site’s visitors. Google Analytics is a platform that allows you to discover the why’s (or usually why not’s) and how’s of the interaction of website visitors with your site.
Best practices
- Set up Google Analytics if you’re serious about finding out more about what’s happening on your website and how you can improve in order to increase profitability.
- Until GA gathers enough data to start analyzing (you’re looking at months, before any data analysis will make any sense), have your systems administrator set up AWstats if it’s not already being used and request at least 4-6 months of the most recent data to get an idea of the stats that it provides. Even though AWstats data is very basic and raw, it’s recommended to get familiar with the 1997 way of things to better understand what Google Analytics provides you with in terms of data and reports. Your web server is likely to have been collecting data for years, so it shouldn’t be a problem to get a chunk of this data to get you set up with some introductory info on website stats
- Keep AWstats running. Even though this tool works differently and data volumes WILL be different, changes in traffic and website behaviour will show in similar ways in both tools. In case of significant changes, you’ll be able to call upon AWstats to confirm what radical shifts you see in Google Analytics
Just wanted to post a quick ‘thanks’! This was a great read. I am currently investigating GA and AWs data differences for my business.
Hi Pete
Glad the post was helpful to your cause!
Awstat is complete, Google Analytics is more “lite”, but if you run a VPS or a small dedicated server and you turn on Awstat on your domains (you can do this also by Plesk), you’ll show a significative increase of CPU working. Google Analytics runs out of your server, so it doesn’t overloads your resources. But if you have tons of server resources, Awstat is better than Google Analytics!