Introduction:
When managing a website, understanding and analyzing your traffic sources is crucial. It helps in evaluating the effectiveness of marketing strategies and making informed decisions. This case study evaluates the similarity of traffic data between Google Analytics, a widely accepted source of website traffic data, and three popular SEO tools: Ahrefs, Serpstats, and Semrush.
Bar Plots for Each Site’s Traffic According to Different Sources
Observations from the Bar Plots:
1. Diversity in Traffic Sources: Different sites have varying leading traffic sources. For some, Google Analytics reports the highest traffic, while for others, tools like Serpstats or Ahrefs show higher numbers.
2. Consistency with Google Analytics and SEMrush: For most sites, the numbers reported by Google Analytics and SEMrush are close or comparable.
3. Serpstats Anomalies: Sites like Spiceology.com, rave-or-sleep.com, and exceltip.com have significantly higher traffic numbers reported by Serpstats compared to other sources.
4. Minimal Traffic on Some Tools: Tools like Serpstats report remarkably low traffic for sites like Roami.com.
5. High Traffic Sites: exceltip.com stands out with an exceptionally high Google Analytics traffic, followed closely by the Search Console traffic.
Relationship between Different Traffic Sources using Scatter Plots
Google Analytics vs Search Console:
There is a visible positive correlation between the numbers from Google Analytics and Search Console, with many points near the red diagonal line.
However, some sites have higher traffic reports on Search Console compared to Google Analytics, as indicated by points lying above the diagonal.
Ahrefs vs Serpstats and SEMrush:
The scatter plot between Ahrefs and Serpstats shows a spread of data points. This suggests variability in how Ahrefs and Serpstats report traffic for the same sites.
The relationship between Ahrefs and SEMrush is more clustered, suggesting a closer alignment between the traffic numbers reported by these two tools.
Next, let’s calculate the difference between Google Analytics traffic and each of the other three sources: Ahrefs, Serpstats, and Semrush.
Observations from the Scatter Plots:
Google Analytics vs. Ahrefs:
A positive correlation can be observed between Google Analytics and Ahrefs, with many data points near or around the red diagonal line. This suggests a relative alignment between the traffic numbers reported by these two tools for many sites.
However, there are a few outliers where Ahrefs reports much higher traffic than Google Analytics.
Google Analytics vs Serpstats:
For several sites, Serpstats reports significantly higher traffic compared to Google Analytics, as indicated by the points far above the diagonal line.
However, for a few sites, both tools report similar traffic numbers.
Google Analytics vs SEMrush:
The relationship is generally closer, with most data points aligning near the red diagonal line. This indicates that for many sites, the numbers reported by Google Analytics and SEMrush are quite similar.
Findings:
- Google Analytics vs. Ahrefs
- Visually, many sites reported higher traffic in Ahrefs compared to Google Analytics.
- The correlation coefficient was 0.618, indicating a moderate positive linear relationship.
- Google Analytics vs. Serpstats
- The majority of sites showed higher traffic counts in Serpstats.
- The correlation coefficient was 0.727, suggesting a strong positive relationship, meaning as Google Analytics traffic increases, Serpstats traffic also tends to increase.
- Google Analytics vs. Semrush
- The differences were varied with some sites reporting higher in Semrush and others lower.
- The correlation was relatively weak at 0.214, indicating a weak linear relationship between the two.
While all three SEO tools show some degree of positive correlation with Google Analytics, Serpstats has the highest correlation, followed by Ahrefs. This suggests that traffic data from Serpstats and Ahrefs may align more closely with Google Analytics compared to Semrush. However, it’s essential to remember that no tool will offer an exact match, and discrepancies can arise due to different methodologies in data collection and processing.
Heatmap showcasing correlations between Google Analytics and the SEO tools.
Conclusion:
Based on the correlation analysis and visual examinations, Serpstats appears to have the closest alignment with Google Analytics, followed by Ahrefs. Semrush seems to diverge more from Google Analytics data. Businesses seeking an SEO tool that mirrors Google Analytics might consider Serpstats as a potential option. However, it’s vital to approach these findings with the understanding that each tool has its methodologies and purposes, leading to variations in reported data.
