THE TROUBLE WITH DATA
The trouble with data on the Web is that they’re impossible to measure with absolute accuracy.18 This is true of data everywhere, of course; it’s just more measurable on the Web. Cities hire car-counting firms to track how busy intersections are to make decisions about new traffic signals, and although it’s likely the counters miss a few cars here and there, the city can still be fairly confident in the conclusions. We track how many people are watching particular television shows by relying on a sampling of viewers to accurately log their viewing habits. They don’t, of course, but it’s still the best signal we’ve got. With Web analytics data, it’s much easier to tell just how far off the numbers are. If you run two Web analytics programs on your site in parallel (and many sites do), you will come up with two sets of data that can never be reconciled. But that’s okay. Rather than spend your time trying to reconcile them, just know that they are about as accurate as Nielsen data or car counting and can be used for overall trends and measurements, if not exact counts.
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