- Joined
- May 7, 2018
- Messages
- 5,481
Have you ever bought traffic and then compared the data between your traffic source and tracker and noticed the data doesn't match up?
Your traffic source might tell you all of your visitors are using AWESOME ISP, but your tracker tells you half of the visitors are using AWESOME ISP and the other half are using THAT OTHER ISP.
What gives?
How are ISPs Determined?
Some of your tracking variables (browser, OS, OS version, etc.) are able to be determined by the user agent string.
Here's an example of one:
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows Phone 10.0; Android 6.0.1; Microsoft; RM-1152) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/52.0.2743.116 Mobile Safari/537.36 Edge/15.15254
As you can see, the user agent string doesn't give all the information about the user that your tracker might be able to give.
Other data points, such as ISP, are determined from the IP address of the user. The IP address has to be looked up in a database, and that database will give the name of the ISP that your user is using in your reporting.
Now here's where the mismatch between different systems comes into play:
Each traffic source, affiliate network, and tracker might be
Your traffic source might tell you all of your visitors are using AWESOME ISP, but your tracker tells you half of the visitors are using AWESOME ISP and the other half are using THAT OTHER ISP.
What gives?
How are ISPs Determined?Some of your tracking variables (browser, OS, OS version, etc.) are able to be determined by the user agent string.
Here's an example of one:
Mozilla/5.0 (Windows Phone 10.0; Android 6.0.1; Microsoft; RM-1152) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/52.0.2743.116 Mobile Safari/537.36 Edge/15.15254
As you can see, the user agent string doesn't give all the information about the user that your tracker might be able to give.
Other data points, such as ISP, are determined from the IP address of the user. The IP address has to be looked up in a database, and that database will give the name of the ISP that your user is using in your reporting.
Now here's where the mismatch between different systems comes into play:
Each traffic source, affiliate network, and tracker might be
