[Bug] Differences between the number of visitors from API.get to Referrers.get

[Chardonneaur]

What happened?

If you look at https://demo.matomo.cloud/index.php?module=API&method=API.get&idSite=1&period=day&date=yesterday&format=JSON&token_auth=anonymous the number of visitors is 9794, if you look at https://demo.matomo.cloud/index.php?module=API&method=Referrers.get&idSite=1&period=day&date=yesterday&format=JSON&token_auth=anonymous the number of unique visitors is 10857 so, there is an issue in finding the right KPI.

What should happen?

The number of visitors from both reports should be exactly the same.

How can this be reproduced?

Look at https://demo.matomo.cloud/index.php?module=API&method=API.get&idSite=1&period=day&date=yesterday&format=JSON&token_auth=anonymous compare it to https://demo.matomo.cloud/index.php?module=API&method=Referrers.get&idSite=1&period=day&date=yesterday&format=JSON&token_auth=anonymous

Matomo version

5

PHP version

No response

Server operating system

No response

What browsers are you seeing the problem on?

No response

Computer operating system

No response

Relevant log output

No response

Validations

• Read our Contributing Guidelines.
• Follow our Security Policy.
• Check that there isn't already an issue that reports the same bug to avoid creating duplicates.
• The provided steps to reproduce is a minimal reproducible of the Bug.

[Chardonneaur]

2024-07-17.11-44-45.mp4

[michalkleiner]

I'm not sure how you're adding the numbers together, but as of now, I see 10142 visits in https://demo.matomo.cloud/index.php?module=API&method=API.get&idSite=1&period=day&date=yesterday&format=JSON&token_auth=anonymous and if I add up the referrers in https://demo.matomo.cloud/index.php?module=API&method=Referrers.get&idSite=1&period=day&date=yesterday&format=JSON&token_auth=anonymous I also get 10142.

[michalkleiner]

7165+1157+973+847+0=10142

[Chardonneaur]

@michalkleiner but I didn't mention visits, I mentioned visitors.

[peterbo]

Without looking into details, but I think these two dimensions are not comparable 1:1, since one visitor can have multiple referrers (one per session). So I guess that a unique visitor can be attributed multiple times to different channels. But I cannot open visitor profiles on demo, so I can't check if that's the case.

[Chardonneaur]

Whaoooo, that's a very good point. Thank you @peterbo I was wrong.