Ezoic
It’s normal to see up to a 10 - 15% difference in traffic figures when comparing Google Analytics with Ezoic’s Big Data Analytics. This is due to the different ways in which the two tools track data.
From time to time, there may be additional reasons why the tools return different results, and these may need to be investigated and resolved. The source of the discrepancies can vary from site to site depending upon your setup. Here is a checklist of factors to consider when troubleshooting.
Have you filtered reports correctly?
It’s important to make sure you’re comparing like for like when running your reports. In the majority of cases, when we see discrepancies in reporting, the issue is to do with a mismatch in filtering settings. You will need to:
1. Select the same date range in both tools.
2. Select the correct website in your Ezoic report (when you log in you’ll be cookied into the website you were last looking at in your account).
If you’re running a sub domain report in one tool, you’ll need to make sure you’ve also selected the same sub domain in the other tool.
3. Make sure you’ve selected 'all platforms' in Ezoic’s Big Data Analytics. (This will then cover any traffic you’re sending to the original setup as well as traffic you’re sending to Ezoic versions).
4. Make sure you’re comparing the same metric (‘Sessions’ in Google Analytics for example corresponds to ‘visits’ at Ezoic. More info on this here: User experience metrics)
5. Take into account that Ezoic's reports don't update typically until midday PST for data from the previous day, so for example when running a report from 1st - 14th December, you would need to wait until at least midday PST on the 15th to run this report.
6. Take into account that the reporting time zone for Ezoic’s Big Data Analytics is PST - so a given 24 hour period runs from midnight to midnight PST. If your Google Analytics is set to report in a different timezone then you are likely to see discrepancies for a given date.
7. You need to make sure you’re filtering by the same traffic sources in both reports. E.g If you’ve run a report for organic traffic in Google Analytics, you’ll need to filter by organic traffic in Big Data Analytics. In Big Data Analytics the traffic reports for all users are found here: https://analytics.ezoic.com/reports/traffic/trafficDaily
Whereas traffic source reports are found here: https://analytics.ezoic.com/reports/trafficSources/trafficSource
N.B: Does your site have any non human traffic? If so, then Ezoic will automatically filter this traffic out of our reports.
8. You’ll need to make sure you’re including the same device types in both reports - e.g if you filter by mobile in one tool you’ll need to filter by mobile in the other:
For a detailed video of how to navigate Big Data Analytics see here.
Integration method
If you have checked all of the above, then the next thing to consider is your integration method. When the site is integrated via Ezoic’s Wordpress integration plugin, Ezoic sits on the other side of the origin server from your host. Some caching plugins can cache in front of Ezoic and stop our reporting working correctly.
It’s advised to either turn off any incompatible plugins or to switch to a different integration method. The latter is recommended as then you can also benefit from site speed improvements which come from having access to our caching via Cloud integration (name server or Cloudflare integration).
When the site is integrated with Ezoic via Cloudflare, you should check whether you have any browser or page level caching enabled in your Cloudflare account - these can affect Ezoic’s reporting, so it’s recommended to delete these rules in Cloudflare if you do have them set up. You should also toggle off Rocket Loader (under Cloudflare’s speed menu) and Cloudflare’s APO if you have either of those active.
Google Analytics script
If you’ve only just set up Google Analytics, it’s good to check if your Google Analytics code has been inserted correctly. If the tracking was correct historically and the discrepancy in reporting has only just started happening, we recommend checking if you have made any changes to how your UA code is inserted recently? If so, can you reverse these changes and check if tracking returns to normal?
If you’re using Leap, then it’s possible our script delay function could be affecting how your original Google Analytics code is tracking. You can exclude your Google Analytics script from 'Script Delay' by excluding ‘gtag’, 'ga.js', 'analytics.js' or 'DataLayer' (which you need to exclude depends on your implementation of GA tracking scripts - if you're unsure, we recommend that you add all four) via the 'URL Rules' section of Leap, which should stop this from happening: more info here: Leap FAQ
Browser extensions
Check the browser reports in both Google Analytics and Big data Analytics. If some of your users are using an ad blocker in Chrome then this can sometimes block Ezoic's tracking, however this doesn’t tend to affect Google Analytics. In that case, you may see higher traffic being reported for the Chrome browser in Google Analytics than in Big Data Analytics.
