Why is there a 10X Difference in Page Views - Discourse vs. Google Analytics?

General
1

I’m seeing about a 10 fold difference in page views between the Discourse metrics vs. Google Analytics metrics.

For example, here are counts for a representative page on one of my forums:

Screen Shot 2022-10-31 at 1.52.27 PM
Screen Shot 2022-10-31 at 1.52.27 PM2472×160 49.9 KB

Here are the google analytics stats for the past week on the same page:

Screen Shot 2022-10-31 at 1.52.51 PM
Screen Shot 2022-10-31 at 1.52.51 PM804×728 163 KB

Now I know these stats are not apples to apples comparisons - the first one is “all the clicks ever for that page”, I believe. While the second are the past week’s results.

But still - shouldn’t they be in the same ballpark (or if anything, the weekly should be less than the Discourse “total views” number?

2

That number in Discourse is capped to counting 1 view per (user OR ip) per day. Google Analytics may be counting multiple views per person, and also have better methods of detecting whether two visitors from the same IP are the same user.

3 Likes
3

This, and another factor can be whether a user’s connection is IPv6 enabled and working.

Situation where I saw something like this before was an instance where the admin didn’t include his server’s v6 address in DNS, so users were accessing Discourse on their v4 public IP, but Google Analytics was seeing them on their device’s v6 address so it was actually less capable of suppressing multiple views from the same user.

EDIT: ack! Just saw how old this post was. Not sure why it popped up in my new list O_o

4 Likes