Here is documentation from a decrease in traffic as recorded in Opentracker. The decrease did not reflect real traffic and was caused by a naming conflict.
Upon investigation it was discovered that there was a script conflict in the coding of the website in question.
Explanation: There was a naming conflict - a div on the webpage page had the same name as one of the local vars in the Opentracker script.
Important Points Regarding Naming Conflicts:
1. naming conflicts are almost always caused by a duplicate name of some javascript variable or html element.
2. can only be resolved by someone taking the time to debug, which is a labor-intensive task in terms of time, in order to find what is exactly wrong because the explanation varies for different sites.
3. documenting a single case will not necessarily help resolve other cases
Below is the description of the problem as experienced by the webmaster:
Opentracker and an alternative system we use provided nearly identical visitor? stats before our site redesign....and suddenly Opentracker has dropped dramatically. For some visitors it works, and some it doesn't.
Can you help? The script is there on each page and looks correct. Some visits are being captured and some are not...is there a troubleshooting procedure?
We are sure the drop off reported by Opentracker is not true. No drop off has occurred in the second system that we use. In fact, traffic has increased about 50% due to dramatic increases in key words? through my adwords account. And we have increased sales volume accordingly.
Yesterday, for example, our other stats say we had 163 visitors, and Opentracker says 19. I have been using both of them for about 6 months, and until now that have not varied by more than about 5%.
The script appears on every page. I have tried hitting the site, and have had friends do it from various parts of the country, while I monitor Opentracker. In most cases their visits are not registered (I don't see the puppet). In each case these people have reviewed the page source? and verified that the script is there.