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by joshyi 2361 days ago
Google Analytics keeps track of visitors using cookies, so if a browser has cookies or JavaScript disabled, then it won't keep track of it. This includes the now so popular adblockers and bots as well. Log analysis such as GoAccess should be able to track these down fine since it works at the server level.

I believe tracking visitors at the client level deflates the actual number of visitors (due to reason listed on #2). On the other hand, server-side tracking gives you a more accurate number at the cost of not knowing for sure if the client is a human behind a browser.