

Ask PG: I see you've switched HN over to mixpanel, how does it work out so far ? - jacquesm

Before mixpanel HN used google analytics for their stats, I just spotted the 'mixpanel' button at the bottom of the page, how does it work out so far ?<p>Are the reports what you expect of them ? Are the numbers in line with what you got reported out of google analytics (I find they're off by quite a bit).
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pg
We never used Google analytics for stats. All we have is a small program
Trevor wrote to make graphs from log files. We're expecting Mixpanel to give
us more different types of info, but I haven't integrated it yet.

~~~
jacquesm
So, Mahmud is correct and it is just an ad right now.

Pity! HN has enough traffic to make a nice example.

Time to bite that bullet then I guess :)

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mahmud
I think it's just an ad. It replaced the Co2Stats banner. If Mixpanel or
google analytics were being used, I would have seen the inserted javascript.
At least not client side.

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patio11
Mixpanel has an API where you can have the server provided data without
needing the client to cooperate by executing your Javascript. Aside from the
obvious accuracy issues this addresses (particular for technical audience who
disable things by default), I find it is much easier to do more sophisticated
action tracking on the server side rather than having to abuse GA to do it via
setting Javascript variables and praying it actually works for a change.

~~~
dpcan
The API appears to be for getting data out - creating your custom dashboard.

Just getting data from a pulled image won't provide browser data or referring
data. Javascript is unfortunately a pretty important requirement to get
accurate data about visitors.

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patio11
You are incorrect, they also have an API for data entry, which you can use to
register arbitrary data from the server. (Including, I suppose, browser
versions or referring URLs since those are, after all, sent in with the HTTP
requests. I haven't actually implemented those since they aren't useful for my
purposes.)

See here for how I use the API through Rails (sans Javascript):

[http://www.bingocardcreator.com/articles/tracking-with-
mixpa...](http://www.bingocardcreator.com/articles/tracking-with-mixpanel.htm)

~~~
dpcan
In my defense, their homepage says in exacltly these words "API TO GET DATA
OUT"

That being said...

So you can use all the browser variables via PHP/Rails/Whatever and then use
Curl (for example) to post stats to their servers? Cool.

I was referring to the ability to do this by simply placing an image on your
site which would require some JS, but I didn't think about it from this angle.

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asb
jacquesm: Could you please comment more on the inaccuracies you notice from
Google Analytics?

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jacquesm
If I take my log files and put them side-by-side with google analytics after
synchronizing the clocks (analytics switches days at 9am in the morning here)
I am sometimes off by as much as 100%.

It's been bugging me for the longest time and I can't find a conclusive cause
for the discrepancy. More interesting is that when I put the analytics numbers
next to the adsense numbers and the log files is that the adsense numbers
(pageviews) tend to be more accurate than the analytics numbers.

For performance reasons the analytics tags are at the end of the page, the
only plausible explanation I can find for all this is that users click links
so fast that they never wait for the page to load fully before they move on.

Because the ad tags are higher up in the page and therefore load earlier that
just might explain part of the gap.

But definitely not all of it.

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tptacek
You're surprised that self-reported Javascript-driven stats are less reliable
than server logs?

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jacquesm
Yep.

See, if they would be underreporting, I would have all kinds of plausible
explanations for that.

But they are _overreporting_ , on some days as much as 100% and I really don't
see how google can see traffic on their tags that I don't have in my logs.

~~~
jongraehl
I wonder if the javascript sends to GA each time a page is reviewed (e.g.
"back") without being fetched anew from your server.

~~~
jacquesm
That could be, but then I'd just see more pageviews, not more uniques, and it
is with the uniques that there is a serious problem.

Adsense pageviews are pretty much dead on, GA pageviews are 'spotty',
sometimes more correct than at other times, GA uniques are simply unreliable.

What I don't get is how adsense seems to get it right wrt to pageviews and GA
does not.

Adsense only reports impressions though, not uniques so I can't compare that
metric between adsense and analytics.

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ableal
Not my specialty, but I came across this comment on reported traffic figures a
couple of days ago:

[http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/11/12/comscore-linkedin-
twitt...](http://www.techcrunch.com/2009/11/12/comscore-linkedin-
twitter/#comment-3093148)

It struck me as interesting; perhaps it's related to what you're looking at.

About the overreporting: have you considered Google-caching ? I often just
look at a cached page, which nicely highlights the words I searched for. Seems
to me the page HTML is served from the Google cache, but images, ads, etc.
come from the original sources.

