Understanding Data Discrepancies

It's not uncommon that Growlytics sessions and other numbers may differ from other vendors like Google Analytics, Mixpanel, etc. This article will help you understand how Growlytics tracks users and sessions.

Highlights

  1. Time Zone: Data ingested by Growlytics are timestamped in UTC but in the report, you see the data specified in the time zone of your account (mentioned while setting up the account).

  2. Web bots & Scrapers: Growlytics' intelligent source identification mechanism makes sure bots and scrapers are ignored for session tracking. Bots like "Googlebot" or any other data scrapers are ignored. This can be the reason you are seeing the discrepancies in a number of sessions.

Google Analytics Discrepancies

Though Google Analytics and Growlytics track sessions similarly, the following table outlines factors that cause a discrepancy in your session numbers.

Scenario
Growlytics
Google Analytics

Time hits midnight

Session continues

The current session ends at 11:59 PM and the new session starts at 12:00 AM.

Campaign source changes

Session continues

New session begins even if it is within the 30-minute threshold.

Session Event Limit

No limit

After the first 10 events, tracking is limited to 1 event per second.

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