Matomo tracks far fewer visits than other web analytics tools, but tracks the same number of pageviews.

If you use other web analytics tools on your website, in some rare cases you may find that Matomo tracks less visits than other tools. The main reason for small discrepancies is usually because Matomo focuses on tracking real users, respects privacy preferences and filters out a lot of bot traffic.

However, sometimes Matomo will track far fewer visits while tracking roughly the same number of pageviews (actions). This situation could indicate that the configuration of Matomo or its users’ network settings is causing pageviews from multiple users to be mistakenly attributed to a single visit linked by a shared IP address.

Users on a network with a shared IP address are tracked as one user

If your website visitors are visiting from one IP address (eg. they connect from the same office or university network), then Matomo may mistakenly believe all actions by this IP address are the same. In this case there are a couple of potential solutions, you can configure User ID tracking to differentiate between users. Alternatively, if you’re using cookies you can make a change to your config file as explained in this FAQ (this method does not work when using cookieless tracking).

Multiple users/visitors are grouped under a proxy IP

Another situation that can lead to multiple users appearing under a single IP address is where you run through a proxy. Without the correct configuration, Matomo might use your proxy IP for users instead of their actual IP address which would lead to less visitors in your report than actually exist. There are multiple scenarios possible here, so check our official FAQ for instructions on configuring IP address tracking when using Matomo with a proxy.