Are Cloudflare Web Analytics based on sample data?
I've noticed some weird results lately. For example, I filtered visits by a specific referer and the previous 7 days. Then I changed to show the last 14 days. Absurdly, I got fewer visits from that referer in the last 14 days than in the previous 7 days. What was weirder is that the numbers were always multiples of 10.
I've searched the Internet and came across a competitor that stated:
"
Cloudflare Web Analytics is not showing the actual stats from your site. They take a subset of all of the data they collect (10% of your total traffic), analyze it and display an assumption based on the patterns seen in the sample they analyzed.
https://plausible.io/vs-cloudflare-web-analytics#stats-are-based-on-a-10-sample
Is that true (or partly true)? Thanks.
Plausible Analytics
Cloudflare Web Analytics vs Plausible Analytics
Here’s a look at Cloudflare Web Analytics and how it compares to Plausible Analytics and other analytics such as Google Analytics.
2 Replies
Oh, thank you. I hadn't noticed that.I've done some tests. It seems that all that goes beyond the previous 7 days is based on a 10% sample of page load events. Good to know.
This is kind of disappointing behaviour. I've only just realised this happens when switching to prev 14 days and I've already switched away from Simple Analytics to Cloudflare Web Analytics on most of my sites. Will Cloudflare ever just show the accurate stats rather than estimates? Plausible are dragging you for it! 😁