Analytics for the win!

So what’s the point of them doing this then? Do they have any ‘traffic for sale’ services?

It’s incredibly stupid to do things this way if they’re doing it on purpose. If someone is attentive enough to want this code and metrics for their site, they most likely already have some idea, even if it’s the most basic, like Webalizer, that comes with their host.

So, it’s gotta be a mistake.

Man, estimating traffic is always a guessing game. You could put 10 different trackers on your website and all of them could be different. Even a webhost bandwidth usage meter could be wrong! Who knows how many people really visit a website. As long as you have a ruler of some sort though, no matter how inaccurate it is.

SHOE WAIT. YOU MIGHT BE MISSING SOMETHING
What if the quantcast numbers are really the accurate ones? I mean 180,000 DIFFERENT PEOPLE? Come on, that’s a lot. On many traffic trackers, if you log in one day, clean out your cookies, log in the next day, it will count you as two different unique visitors. GOogle on the other hand may not keep records of EVERYONE who visited your site over a course of a month, that would be a ton of records. I think what the whole picture could be saying, could be saying 6800 TRUE uniques per month , 184,000 times those 6800 people visited your site (with possible clean out cookies or whatever), and then 1.2 million pageviews total over the course of a month for those 6800 people. (thats only 176 pageviews per month per visitor) I visit your site atleast twice a day, so I’m sure people like me contribute to so many pageviews. I mean, are there even 184,000 people who know what SEO/Adsense/making money online is?

I’ve been very happy with the quantified results from Quantcast, it almost exactly matches my Google Analytics. What’s weird is that you are only showing the barebones results on the Quantcast page (which is partially your choice of what to show) but if you WERE gathering data correctly, it wouldn’t say “estimated” next to the uniques, so you’re probably doing something wrong.

Also, Google Analytics is pretty bad about counting absolute uniques - it’s always like 70% new users on almost every site I’ve seen, clearly a failure of their cookie/javascript approach.

Yea I’ve noticed the same thing. I know my website’s traffic stats like the back of my hand. Quantcast greatly understated my site. *thumbs down*

I could understand a small difference in the number, we are talking more than a factor of 10, that’s crazy!

Yeah… this is why I just stick to basic Awstats. Seems the most accurate through and through beyond all these independant new traffic detailers. I use Google Analytics to but… well, it’s good for knowing time estimates I suppose. But yeah that Quantcast thing looks pretty useless.

I knew there stats were off but didnt know they were off that much I was going to try them but I dont know since you were already the guinea pig for it hah

I use my server statistics they are the most acurate that you can get!

looks like they suck big time. btw, shoemoney can you remove that annoying popup splash thingy that asks you to join the newsletter. i doubt its necessary my man.

seems invasive. you are better off adding a subscribe icon or link at the bottom of each post.

Google always create the best tools I tried also other analytics tools and all of them I got different numbers that is strange even in your webanalyzer (Your sever analytic tool) it also gives you other numbers…

I like looking at your title bar and seeing:

Quantcast Has Bullshit Stats - Shoemoney

lol

“Anyway the quantcast numbers never changed since I installed the code.”

Since you mention this, are you sure it is installed properly? On my site it matches Google Analytics almost exactly.

Google Analytics is the best free one I think. I tried 103 Bees but Google Analytics is so easy, it is hard to change. I would like to try clicktracks.

I agree with Marcus, if you had the code up for “months” and it was that innacurate seems very strange.

http://laughingsquid.com/laughing-squid-traffic-blog-metrics/

Twice you used “there” instead of “their”.

Obviously, they need to work this out if they want to be a viable resource. With analytics already in use by so many people, you need to offer an accurate tracker with some added benefit if you want to gain market share. Counting a tiny percentage of actual visitors to a site is not the kind of extra feature I’d have in mind…

Brings into question the analytics that a lot of these blog widgets use. Good on you for reporting this discrepancy, hopefully they can get it fixed

WAIT, how can they tell if its a male or a female visiting the site?

What a joke

It’s normal. Quancast takes like 3 weeks to update after you’ve added the code.

6000 uniques a day is great, and there’s room for a lot of improvement if you could rank better in Google..

I was going to check out their stuff, but got too busy this past week to deal with it and forgot. Now I’m glad I didn’t waste my time.

On a side note, I came here from Google Reader, where I’m subscribed to your feed, yet I got a little window prompting me to subscribe.

Almost forgot. I like the technical numbers. It just goes to show that more smart people are using Firefox these days.

I do love Google for the free stats and analysis tools. Yay - go Goog’s!

agreed i will never use them again.

Thats quite funny.. I thought you’d have been onto this a LONG time ago.. but you’re spot on anyway.

Their metrics might as well be plucked out of thin air.

good idea in thought but you have to give people what you promise or the service is no good!

177k unique difference , thats a joke

I wonder how many of these replies above are from Quancast employees… seems to be a few out doing “damage control”…

Google analytics rocks. I dont think any other tool could touch it unless they offer some really revolutionary.

I dont use them anymore either - same reason

You’re probably getting such massive traffic that their servers couldn’t handle it and they capped you. We’ll call it the shoemoney effect

must be something buggy with them about your site. I’ve noticed they are very accurate with my 8 year old website. The most accurate of any traffic site so far. And I haven’t installed any code. I just observe their numbers and their within about 5% of my real stats. And I get over half a million a month so it’s a pretty good estimate.

guys, just found this new site called… clickorburn-dot-com…
just kidding. I don’t use a site tracker right now, maybe its time.
(hey that domain was not taken, so I bought it)

Just another company that thinks it can compete with a billion dollar company - Google!!

Your Firefox browser numbers are off the charts. Non tech websites are averaging 10% across the board.

I checked them out a while ago and also found their stats to be way off. It seems to be a bit of a pointless service.

My experience with one of my small sites is that Quantcast is fairly accurate. But not perfect. I suppose Analytics isn’t either. Oh well, I gave it a shot. Maybe I should try it on my higher traffic site?

Hi all — I work for Quantcast.

That said, I took at look at the ShoeMoney implementation as a Quantified Publisher –First, like Google Analytics, the tag needs to be on every page.

Secondly, the data is there, but you choose to supress the direcly measured data through your election of “Panel Estimate” vs “Directly Measured”. We put publishers in full control of their profile. You can show or hide what you wish.

Our model is convergent — we combine panel data with directly measured data. This ensures more and more accurate measurement. That said, panels will always have a margin of error associated with them — thus the launch of the Quantified Publisher program. Over 15,000 publishers have signed up to date.

If anyone has questions or want to try the free Quantcast Publisher program… let me know. I can be reached at 415-738-4755.

My best,

Mark Schulze
VP, Quantcast

I posed earlier today — but we always identify ourselves as being with Quantcast. Drop us a line if you want more information!
Best,
Mark

180k visitors monthly? So only likely 5000 visitors leave their comment in Shoemoney monthly. where are the rest gone to? correct me if i am wrong, not good at this stuff ^^;

I think Jon and Mark in earlier posts may have hit upon your problem. I’ve encountered issues before where the javascript code wasn’t placed in the best position or I didn’t opt for a certain configuration.

I use both GA and Quantcast and the numbers are close enough.

Quantcast, has crappy stats honestly a waste of time. Completely off the chart…

[...] has one of the web’s top blogs on money making and on Sunday he posted a Google Analytics screenshot of one month of his stats. There is a wealth of information there, [...]

There isnt much good sites out there to track internet websites traffic beside alexa .. and quantcast. when i know about quantcast, i’ve almost wanted to sign up and put their tracking code. after some thoughts, i put it off… didnt want any 3rd party to data-mined my traffic details.

Yup..i agree that Quantcast is even crappier than alexa

that happens a lot with publisher sites like that. Even adsense gives less impressions than your normal pageviews. Never a 100%

The worst thing about these third party analytics is that you can not opt out.I’ve asked politely, but Quantcast REFUSES to not put up bullshit numbers about my site. Their numbers are way off and I can NOT use their code on every page since I have an SSL site. They offer a “secure” code version which does not work anyway. So I’m stuck with shitty stats that I can not do anything about. This sucks.

Does anyone know if this situation has improved. I’ve got a client complaining that their quantcast numbers are dropping! I’m trying to tell him politely that its crap but he aint listening.

Stick with Google Analytics for now. QuantCast is still working out the bugs.

how come sites like wordpress, digg and nbc have quantified their sites then, maybe they just take a very long time to quantify the site…i guess its not worth waiting that long then…