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As more and more companies use more than one analytic packages (google analytics, omniture, coremetrics, etc..), I am hearing more and more, "why are the totals from this analytics report, different from the other?" Some exec's get very upset and feel one oftheanalytics packages trackingis broken. Feel free to use 2, 3, 4, 100 different analytics packages, however, do NOT - let me repeat that- DO NOT compare stats from one package to the other and try to figure out why one reports 1000 visitors yesterday and the other reports 1144. why one shows 30 conversions for a keyword and the other package shows 32. etc..

You will drive yourself batty!!

All analytics programs track differently and have some type of reporting delay. For example:

one program may have a 30 day cookie and the other a 90 day cookie. If someone visits your site through a paid search ad today and then visits again in 45 days, the 2 analytic programs may show these conversions in 2 different reports.

Someone clicks on a paid search ad then clicks on an email you just sent out. One program may give credit to the paid ad, one may give credit to the email.

From what I understand, Google adwords will add the conversion to the day the click took place. If you clicked on an ad on Monday and went back in to buy the product on Tuesday, Adwords will show the conversion took place on Monday. almost all other programs will show the conversion the actual day it took place.

I can go on and on. So please, take this advice. If you and your boss would like a less stressful meeting to go over reports, stick with the stats of one program. Feel free to look at both, but do not compare stats. They will never match exactly.