Comparing ClickTale data to other analytics tools

Why does ClickTale sometimes report different values compared to some other web analytics solutions?
Different web analytics products may use a variety of methods to track visits to your website. Therefore, it is normal to see discrepancies between reports created by various products. However, we generally believe that the best way to think of web-site metrics is to consider trends rather than straight numbers.

The main reasons why your report might be showing variations in figures

 * You ran out of ClickTale credits during certain parts of the day.
 * You are not recording 100% of your visitors.
 * Some visitors had JavaScript and/or cookies disabled.
 * You had some visitors with unsupported browsers.
 * You had some visitors who opted out of ClickTale.
 * You are counting bot and spider traffic.
 * You are comparing different metrics one with another such as pageviews vs visitors vs clicks.
 * You are comparing per day data while using different timezones as day boundaries.

Additional Reasons

 * Terminology: The terminology used in ClickTale may not mean the same thing or may not be measured in the same way as in another system. Page views are generally similar between vendors; however, it is much more difficult to define a visit or a visitor.
 * Tracking methods: There are two main methods of tracking activity: cookie-based and IP + User Agent. Cookie-based tracking relies on a browser setting the cookie. If cookies are disabled, cookie-based analytics programmes will not count the visit. IP + User Agent tracking typically uses log file analysis for its data. This may report higher numbers than reported by cookie-based tracking because of dynamically assigned IP addresses and spider and robot visits.
 * First-party vs. third-party cookies: Even among cookie-based tracking solutions, there is a difference between first-party and third-party cookies. Because third-party cookies are set by an external source other than the website being visited, they are often blocked by browsers and security software. ClickTale uses first-party cookies.
 * Third-party images: Some browsers give users the option to disable images that are requested from domains other than the current page. Disabling such images will prevent data from being sent to ClickTale.
 * Filters/settings: ClickTale provides data filters. Differences in the way that filters are applied, or creating different filtering altogether, can drastically affect the data in your reports
 * Time zone differences: If your Web analytics solutions group data using different time zones, your daily or hourly data will be affected.
 * Visitor browser preferences: Visitors must have JavaScript, images and cookies enabled in their browsers in order for Analytics to report their visit. Depending on their method of collecting data, other analytics solutions may still register these visitors.
 * Caching: ClickTale directly calls ClickTale servers each time that a page is visited, even if the page has been cached. Other analytics solutions may not record an additional visit if the page is pulled from a user's or server's cache.

Google Analytics
When recordings are viewed in your ClickTale Account it can occasionally cause extra hits to be recorded by Google Analytics, to prevent this; Please contact support to discuss any major discrepancies between figures.
 * 1) Exclude dmz0x.app.clicktale.com from Google Analytics (where x is the Partition ID from the Tracking Code).
 * 2) Use the ClickTaleExcludeBlock markers to surround the Google Analytics code.