Why are publication usage metrics different from general site usage metrics

The platform uses two different systems to track usage:


This can lead to differences, if the two data sets are compared, with OPERAS often showing higher numbers than Plausible. Whilst OPERAS does include significant bot blocking (over 100,000 bots are blocked each day from our platform), generally speaking the Plausible bot-filtering logic is more aggressive than the OPERAS Metrics, but legitimate results can also be lost due to the following reasons:

  • Ad Blockers: While traditional ad blockers target Google Analytics domain requests easily, some privacy-focused extensions still block third-party analytics scripts if they are loaded directly from Plausible's domain.
  • Aggressive Bot & Data Center Filters: Plausible blocks roughly 32,000 data center IP ranges and looks for unnatural behavioral patterns. Legitimate users browsing from corporate cloud networks, virtual private servers, or specific VPN endpoints* can occasionally get flagged and filtered out as non-human.
    • VPNs & Corporate Networks: Plausible's automated data-center IP blocks can inadvertently filter out legitimate human users browsing from corporate cloud networks or VPN endpoints.
  • Browser Privacy Settings: Highly restrictive browser setups or specialized extensions can disrupt network requests, preventing the lightweight tracking script from firing successfully on page load.

Work to refine and enhance the OPERAS bot exclusion functionality is under ongoing review and refinement.

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