Why Mida Data May Differ from Google Analytics or Your Internal Reports

This article explains why the numbers you see in Mida may differ from Google Analytics or your internal reporting, and how to compare them correctly.

The Problem

You may notice that Mida reports fewer visitors or conversions than Google Analytics or your internal database. This often leads to concerns that tracking is inaccurate because the numbers don’t match your daily sales reports or session counts.

Why This Happens

Mida and analytics platforms like Google Analytics measure fundamentally different units.

Mida tracks unique visitors assigned to an experiment, while Google Analytics primarily tracks sessions. A single person can generate multiple sessions in Google Analytics, but that same person is counted once in Mida for the purpose of an experiment.

Because of this difference, totals between the two systems will rarely match exactly.

How to Compare the Data Correctly

1. Compare against events collected by Mida
   When validating experiment results, compare Mida’s experiment data only with the same conversion events collected by Mida. Do not compare Mida results directly with Google Analytics session-based reports or internal systems that aggregate sessions.

2. Understand sessions vs unique visitors
   Google Analytics counts every visit as a new session, including repeat visits by the same person. Mida counts the individual once per experiment to avoid inflating results.

3. Verify event implementation
   Ensure the conversion event you are analyzing is triggered in the same way across variants and is being successfully received by Mida.

4. Focus on experiment-level trends, not reporting parity
   Mida is designed to measure relative performance between variants. Exact numerical parity with external analytics tools is not expected and is not required for valid experiment results.

Quick Reference

Mida measures unique visitors and experiment events, while Google Analytics measures sessions and visits.

For accurate validation, always compare Mida experiment results with events collected by Mida, not external session-based metrics.