Numbers differ from another tool

No two analytics tools count the same way, so Muro's numbers won't match Google Analytics, Plausible, your hosting provider or your server logs exactly. This page explains the usual reasons, so you can tell a normal gap from a problem with your install.

As a rule of thumb, two client-side tools that agree within 10 to 15% are both installed correctly.

Visitors

Muro's visitor ID resets every day. Visitors are counted with a hash that rotates every 24 hours and is never stored as a cookie. Someone who visits on three different days in your selected range counts as three visitors. Tools that keep a long-lived cookie count them once. So over a week or a month, Muro's Visitors is usually higher than "users" in Google Analytics. For a single day the numbers are closer.

Each subdomain counts separately. The same person on www.example.com and app.example.com counts as two visitors. See Tracking across subdomains.

Similar devices can share an ID. Two people with the same browser, screen size, language and time zone on the same site, on the same day, can occasionally hash to the same ID. This is rare.

Sessions

• A session ends after 30 minutes without activity. Other tools use different timeouts, and some also start a new session at midnight or when the campaign changes.
• Sessions are per browser tab. A visitor who opens your site in two tabs usually has two sessions.
• Bounce rate is the share of sessions with only one pageview. Google Analytics 4 uses "engaged sessions" instead, which is a different measure, so the two can't be compared directly.

Pageviews

• Muro counts a pageview on each page load and on each single-page-app navigation (history.pushState and back/forward). Tools differ in how they handle client-side navigation, so SPA sites often show the biggest gaps.
• If your app pushes history entries for things that aren't page changes, or a page has # anchor links, Muro counts extra pageviews. See Pageviews counted twice.

Server logs and hosting dashboards

Server-side numbers are almost always much higher than any analytics script, because they include:

• bots, crawlers, uptime monitors and link previews, which never run JavaScript;
• requests for images, scripts, fonts and API calls, not just pages;
• prefetches and repeated requests that a visitor never sees as a page.

Muro counts only visits where a real browser ran the script. It doesn't filter out bots that do run JavaScript, so a busy headless crawler can show up as visitors.

Blocked scripts

Ad blockers, privacy extensions, some company networks and a strict Content Security Policy can stop analytics scripts. Every tool is on different blocklists, so each one misses a different slice of your traffic.

Where the script loads

Muro's snippet is a plain <script async> in <head>, so it starts loading immediately. A tool that loads later, for example after a consent banner or after the page becomes interactive, misses visitors who leave quickly. That makes Muro's pageviews and bounce rate higher than that tool's.

Referrers and campaigns

• Muro keeps only the referrer's hostname, and drops it when it matches your own hostname exactly.
• Referrers, UTM values, devices and locations are attributed to each visitor's first touch in the period, so each breakdown adds up to your Visitors total. Tools that count by session or last click give different splits.
• Muro reads utm_source, utm_medium and utm_campaign. It doesn't read utm_term or utm_content from your site's URLs.

Time zones and date ranges

Muro shows every day in the project's timezone, set in Settings → Project. If the other tool uses a different timezone, "yesterday" covers different hours in each. Check both tools use the same timezone and exactly the same date range before comparing.

Devices with the wrong clock

Muro rejects events stamped more than 24 hours in the past or more than 10 minutes in the future. A small number of visitors with badly wrong device clocks aren't counted.

Shopify revenue

If you compare Muro's revenue with Shopify's reports, note that Muro counts only paid orders, net of refunds, in your shop's currency. Cancelled, pending, test and point-of-sale orders are left out. See Shopify revenue.

When to investigate

A gap is worth looking into when:

• Muro is close to half or double the other tool. Check for a missing or duplicated snippet.
• The gap suddenly widens on a certain date. Something on the site probably changed, such as a new template without the snippet or a new CSP.
• One section of the site is missing. That template may not include the snippet.

Next steps