I noticed quite a few site owners recommending 51LA recently. Since I was already getting a bit tired of using Baidu Tongji, I decided to give 51LA a try. I’ve been using it for about a month now, and after comparing the data with Baidu’s, a few things stood out.

Traffic numbers are higher than Baidu Tongji

On one of my sites, Baidu Tongji had been showing a fairly steady daily traffic level of a little over 200 IPs for a long time. On 51LA, though, the same site has generally been showing 300+ IPs per day, and the number has even been climbing recently.

I checked yesterday’s data and the IP count was 399. It’s hard to tell what exactly is going on here. Maybe the site’s traffic really did increase, maybe Baidu Tongji undercounts, or maybe 51LA reports a more generous number. Either way, seeing the IP count go up is still nice.

Keyword tracking isn’t very accurate

At the moment, 51LA seems to only capture keywords from Bing. For other search engines, it basically doesn’t provide much useful keyword data.

Of course, Baidu Tongji mostly tracks Baidu’s own search terms anyway, so neither tool feels especially complete in this area.

I also joined 51LA’s premium site program

One practical reason for using its analytics is that joining this program can bring in a bit of money. According to the platform, after applying you wait about a week for review and then another week during the waiting period, so the whole process is supposed to take around two weeks.

In my case, it took about a month before I was approved.

As for earnings, it looks like it only amounts to a few yuan per week. It’s not much, but it’s still better than nothing.