Discourse metrics don't match Google metrics

[simon]

There are a few topics about this already. The simplest explanation that I have seen is in this post:

Why there is huge difference in Pageviews tracking number on discourse admin dahboard and on google analytics

Since my original message I have reconciled multiple sites multiple times. We simply count differently to what google does. Google uses JavaScript ajax calls to count page views. We work hard only to issue them on first load or when you transition routes (like move from topics to latest list) Our Page View counting is performed on the “raw requests” made (accounting for a header that informs us when to count) Bots, JavaScript disabled are counted by us but omitted from Google.

A detailed explanation of how Discourse counts crawler traffic is in this topic:

Smarter handling of random crawler traffic

Following: https://github.com/discourse/discourse/commit/7b562d2f46c60df5323ac06731cf341d95d85027 We now have much improved crawler/bot detection. In the past we have seen many customers complain that pageviews in Google analytics are way off from pageviews in Discourse. This change much more accurately splits up the traffic so both reports are more inline. While analysing this problem I noticed that we are allowing a gigantic amount of crawling from many probably pointless sources. https://…