Telligent page views vs Google Analytics page views

Hi Oliver, I wonder if this thread may be relevant for you: https://community.telligent.com/community/11/f/ask-the-community/1147093/viewed-content-vs-view-count/1605928#1605928

It has relevant information regarding how GA (web analytics) and Verint/Telligent track views. There is also a response in there about ensure the ETL task is running as expected. The information may be helpful by itself if the ETL task is running as expected.

Another thread reply from Brian that may be useful: https://community.telligent.com/community/11/f/ask-the-community/1147791/how-can-we-know-which-pages-articles-threads-the-members-visit-on-a-per-user-basis/1608088#1608088 

Let me know if that helps provide some guidance. We could also work with you/Lucy to see what GA is showing in comparison to what we show, though again, they will never line up due to different methodologies being used. 

Thanks!

This is really helpful, thanks Grant. I appreciate the detailed explanation from Steven in the link you shared, and I have shared that with my data scientist colleague.

From a reporting perspective, the issue for me is that I want to collect this metric and so I need to make a choice essentially about who to believe.

For example, I get a monthly page views report from Telligent that said my community got over 4m page views in Sept, but GA has this number around 250-300k. Even discounting RSS and API views, that is a massive difference, and it leaves me wondering what the actual number is.

The fun thing that I've seen over the years is, pick another web analytics tool, it will also likely give you different numbers. It's a unique science for sure and it depends on the methodology and what is/isn't allowed to be tracked. 

If you do a search for "Google Analytics accuracy" you'll find quite a few sites questioning its accuracy. In your case, the question that comes up is, what do you have GA tracking? Have you filtered anything out (e.g. bots/spiders/ARM traffic/etc)? The configurations on your end, as well as the users end, often tell a story as well. This why we say (as Steven pointed out in his response) you may have to not look at the specific numbers in each instance, but look at the trends each tool gives you to see how things are going.

The nice thing for the SaaS piece is we can provide you the raw data if you'd like, so you can see exactly what is being counted. It is certainly an exercise for your team to go through, but if it helps alleviate concerns, that is why we can provide it.

I also, out of curiosity, went to some of our competitors communities just now, same types of conversations going on over the years, so you're not alone in this. Just a matter of picking the tool you and your organization are comfortable relying on and trek on from there! I tend to pick the native tools of the product I'm using since 3rd party tools can just vary so greatly depending on how they are set up. My opinion of course!

Thanks Grant, this is true of my experience with other vendors as well, I appreciate the detailed response.

Thanks Grant, this is true of my experience with other vendors as well, I appreciate the detailed response.