Funky stats for guests?

[MattH]

I just noticed a large number of guests on the forum, around 70... we tend to have about 30 for this, and when it 'pops' I tend to look into traffic sources to see if there is a link/tweet or something to boost it. When I looked in google analytics, I got a completely different number..

Anyone else experience this and know which might be right?

 

[AndyB]

Most of those "guests" are actually robots.

You might like to use this add-on to white list only those robots you allow:

https://xenforo.com/community/resources/robots.3900/

 

[Jeremy P]

In addition to the above, Google Analytics is showing you current visitors in real-time (ie users that have your website open and focused).

The online status in XenForo is measured differently, using a timeout (defaulting to 15 mins) from last activity. So that means you have had 70ish "guests" in a rolling 15 minute period, not all at once.

 

[MattH]

interesting thanks. I had thought that XF tagged the bots as bots,as my normal numbers seem believable.. EG 30 guests when I have 30+ members signed in as standard, with maybe 18 bots..

And I also thought it was real time, as the reaction time to sending out a blast is pretty fast, and people drop off pretty fast when bored! Guess I should look closer at that.