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Category: Reporting & Analytics

Discuss the best ways to report on performance and communicate results to stakeholders.


  • Hello All, How long analytics keep the data for one website? at least two years at least 25 months other I guess that they guarantee at least 25 months, but it might be more.
    Anyone has any other suggestion? Thanks,

    | CommercePundit
    0

  • I operate two sites for a client.  One is a local business and one is their national business.  I used the same template for both sites (with changes) but accidentally left a link in the footer to the local site.  Now the local site is showing 12k backlinks from the national site.  I removed the link over 2 weeks ago but it still shows up in Google WMT in the "Links to your Site" section.  It goes to a coupon page and not a "targeted" page but 12k links to the local site is 6 TIMES what I had before. My question is: "Is there a way to get Google to remove the link from Google WMT?"  More specifically force it.   Like I said the link has been removed for over 2 weeks but it still shows up in the Local site's Incoming Links section of WMT. Thanks.

    | DarinPirkey
    0

  • How does Google Analytics aggregate the Count of Visits ?

    | CommercePundit
    0

  • I have a wordpress site http://muslim-academy.com/I check in Google Webmasters tool today and I see the increase number of errors in Others area of Google webmaster Tool.The error code is 400http://muslim-academy.com/%D8%B3%D9%8A%D8%B1%D8%A9-%D8%AA%D8%A7%D8%B1%D9%8A%D8%AE%D9%8A%D8%A9-%D9%84%D9%84%D8%B1%D8%A6%D9%8A%D8%B3-%D8%AC%D9%85%D8%A7%D9%84-%D8%B9%D8%A8%D8%AF-%D8%A7%D9%84%D9%86%D8%A7%D8%B5%D8%B1-2/%D8%B3%D9%....%3Cbr%20/%3E________________%3Cbr%20/%3E___________%3Ca%20href=?lang=zhOne of the example link of this error.Can you guide me why the number of errors are increasing and how to fix the existing errors.

    | csfarnsworth
    0

  • Buongiorno from 23 degrees C Wetherby UK 🙂 Do you ever get the impression Google doesnt Like SEO practitioners? Thing is the (not provided) snag in the key word Analytics data is a complete pain in arse. Yes you can go into webmaster tools and get a feel for organic keyword data but the joy stops abruptly when you need a full picture of traffic acquisition from a specific keyword. So my question is please:
    "When a client asks, give me traffic data acquired from an organic phrase". How on earth can you give an accurate answer? And to add salt into the wound the traffic data is going to be less so your SEO efforts are going to take a hit". Is the answer use another analytics service?
    Grazie tanto,
    David

    | Nightwing
    0

  • Hey Everyone, My company has just changed the order processing software we are using and it's causing some issues with Google Analytics conversion funnel tracking.  Specifically, there is one point in the funnel where making certain selections (which about half the people do) causes the page to reload.  Also, on the login/register page, if they miss a field, the software tells them missed the field, but loads a new page which has a different URL which is not a part of the funnel when a mistake like that isn't made. All of this is causing Google Analytics to report people as leaving the conversion funnel when they really haven't.  About a third of the traffic is being shown as exiting the funnel with the exit URL being the exact same URL as the step they are supposedly exiting from (example: the visitor enters on page1, moves to page2, Google is showing that they exit on page2 and go to...page2. Does anyone have any suggestions of how to deal with this in Google Analytics?  If not, do you have a recommendation of an alternative analytics program which can deal with the situations mentioned above? PS - Changing the way the checkout software works does not appear to be a viable option. Kurt Steinbrueck
    OurChurch.Com

    | Kurt_Steinbrueck
    1

  • Buongiorno from yes we still have free parking Wetherby UK!
    Ok when it comes to detecting broken links I'm getting really frustrated with webmaster tools. Now I'm probably going to end up with egg on my face with this one but here is an example of webmaster tools reporting a broken link which i cant find. http://i216.photobucket.com/albums/cc53/zymurgy_bucket/phantom-broken-links_zpsb74e1246.jpg Having trawled through the code i just cant see the knackered link? Is it a phantom report or is something usefull being detected here? Grazie tanto,
    David

    | Nightwing
    1

  • The site in question is www.homeanddesign.com where we are working on recovering from some big traffic loss. I finally have gotten the sites articles properly meta titled and descriptioned now I'm working on removing low lying content. The way there CMS is built, images have their own page (every one that's clickable).  So this leads to a lot of thin content that I think needs to be removed from the index.  Here is an example: http://www.homeanddesign.com/photodisplay.asp?id=3633 I'm considering the best way to remove it from the index but not disturb how users enjoy the site. What are my options?  Here is what I'm thinking: add Disallow: /photodisplay to the robots.txt file See if there is a way to make a lightbox instead of a whole new page for images.  But this still leaves me with 100s of pages with just an image on there with backlinks, etc. Add noindex tag to the photodisplay pages

    | williammarlow
    0

  • Hi all, I have a problem with Conversion Tracking in Google Analytics. Our contact form conversion completes when the user hits the Thank You page. Yesterday we had an increase in conversions that didn't correlate to form submission emails. It appears that one person filled out our form, then returned (hit the back button?) to the Thank You page another 8 times as there were 8 entrances to the Thank You page and it's currently no indexed. Is there a way to prevent this from happening? Or should I just note in Analytics that the Conversion data is wrong for that day and note how many? Thanks!

    | nsauser
    0

  • When I insert the keyword 'IT jobs' with Belgium as country and Dutch as the language, there is a huge difference between the results in the keyword planner and the keyword tool. Keyword tool says 1,000,000 local searches per month Keyword planner says 590 local searches per month This is a really big difference and I don't know which results I should trust. Can anybody help me with this?

    | Murielleu
    0

  • There seems to have been an uptick in users on our site not being tracked in Google Analytics cause I see a lot more un-tracked revenue in the last 6 months then I used to. I know analytics is still working as it has been tracking a normal amount of visits but I assumed there might be a reason less would be actually showing up in analytics (mabye a change is what is being reported as organic). I know a lot of stuff goes into "not provided" such as logged in search and stuff like that but is there a list of all of the ones that go into not provided and all that just do not get tracked (javascript not enabled, iOS?). If it could be something else as well let me know. Thanks for the help!

    | Gordian
    0

  • I have set up my Moz campaign and the crawl errors are showing multiple duplicate content and page titles however when I check my webmaster tools data, these errors are not showing up. Is this normal and who should I listen to?

    | LabelMedia
    0

  • I'm trying to set myself up as a Webmaster on my company's site. We use Network Solutions. I am following Google's directions on how to do this. However, I am a bit wary. Here are the directions. Underlined is the part I am having trouble with: Log in to your account for howlatthemoon.com at www.networksolutions.com by clicking theManage Account icon. In the left navigation bar, open the nsWebAddress (Domains) menu by clicking the **+ **icon. Click Manage Domain Names. On the Domain Details page for the domain you're using, select the Designated DNS radio button (to the right of Change domain to point to) and click the Apply Changes button. If you've previously modified your advanced DNS settings, click Edit (to the right ofDomain currently points to). Under the Advanced DNS Manager heading, click Manage Advanced DNS Records. Under the Text (TXT Records) heading, click Add/Edit. In the Host field, enter @. Leave the TTL field set to the default value. In the Text field, copy and paste the following unique security token: 
    (security token removed for obvious reasons) Click Continue. Review your changes and click Save Changes. When you've done saving the TXT record, click the Verify button below on this page. There is already a host of @ (None). The text for it reads: v=spf1 include:_spf.google.com ~all I called Network Solutions and the guy I was speaking with told me to delete it and replace it with my Google Webmasters code. However, I think this is setting up our email. Do I just add the Webmasters in and have two hosts of @ (None)? Thanks!

    | howlusa
    0

  • Hi All, Kindly explain how to implement eCommerce tracking code on the website.I am aware how to enable and generate eCommerce tracking code in Google Analytics but have confusion from website end.Also, where i read the steps, everywhere i read the below code: <script< span="">type="text/javascript"> var _gaq = _gaq ||[]; _gaq.push(['_setAccount','UA-XXXXX-X']); _gaq.push(['_trackPageview']); _gaq.push(['_addTrans', '1234', // transaction ID - required 'Acme Clothing', // affiliation or store name '11.99', // total - required '1.29', // tax '5', // shipping 'San Jose', // city 'California', // state or province 'USA' // country ]); // add item might be called for every item in the shopping cart // where your ecommerce engine loops through each item in the cart and // prints out _addItem for each _gaq.push(['_addItem', '1234', // transaction ID - required 'DD44', // SKU/code - required 'T-Shirt', // product name 'Green Medium', // category or variation '11.99', // unit price - required '1' // quantity - required ]); _gaq.push(['_trackTrans']);//submits transaction to the Analytics servers (function(){ var ga = document.createElement('script'); ga.type ='text/javascript'; ga.async =true; ga.src =('https:'== document.location.protocol ?'https://ssl':'http://www')+'.google-analytics.com/ga.js'; var s = document.getElementsByTagName('script')[0]; s.parentNode.insertBefore(ga, s); })(); ----------------------------------------</script<> In the above code specific transaction id, SKU/code are mentioned. What will be the modifications in the above code if i have to track all products present on my eCommerce website??

    | RuchiPardal
    1

  • Hi guys, is there any way to group specific pages together in analytics and just see how they have peroformed visit wise, etc? I need to group some resort guides all with different names, it's tedious going through each one manually. Help much appreciated as always!

    | pauledwards
    0

  • Buongiorno from 16 degrees C wetherby UK famous for the Wetherby Whaler Chippy 😉 OK... on this site http://www.philpotts.co.uk/ I've  set up sub domain tracking as so:
    Parent site:
    http://www.philpotts.co.uk/ Sub domain
    http://shop.philpotts.co.uk/ So my question is please: should a dot be placed in the sub domain line as in : _gaq.push(['_setDomainName', '.philpotts.co.uk']); Some advice places a dot in setDomainName other advice doesnt 😞
    Any insights welcome, Grazie,David

    | Nightwing
    0

  • Hi guys, so recently Google released the 'manual actions' tab under 'search traffic' in Google webmaster tools. Recently hit by panda i checked this and got: " Unnatural links to your site—impacts links Google has detected a pattern of unnatural artificial, deceptive, or manipulative links pointing to pages on this site. Some links may be outside of the webmaster’s control, so for this incident we are taking targeted action on the unnatural links instead of on the site’s ranking as a whole." However was this not the message before saying it was not a complete manual ban, just affecting a few bad links? I was hit badly in the rankings but still have some good terms and traffic is not that bad still from organic non-brand. I have fixed many of the bad links (horrible articles submissions that went out of control in 2009) - do i do a reconsideratikn request? i have disavowed the bad links that are left 3 weeks ago? so do i wait to see if disavow works or do a reconsideration request?I was sure this was like the message sent out before which meant it wasn't that bad for your site, just a few links ignored? Any advice much appreciated, thank you.

    | pauledwards
    0

  • For MSN I have about 8000 hits of one page and a 100% bounce rate. In the last month I have about 400 hits from Yahoo with a 100% bounce rate.  Msn is all different pages, while Yahoo is all the home page. What would cause this?

    | EcommerceSite
    0

  • The Analytics on my blog broke for about two weeks before I realized it. I need to come up with some estimated numbers for total pageviews, referrals, direct hits, etc to add to my monthly SEM report. I took the average of the past four 2 week periods to come up with the number of hits.  Should I just add this number to the total hits on my site? Or are these hits being counted twice if they went on to the main site? http://www.howlatthemoon.com

    | howlusa
    0

  • Hello, We have Google Analytics on our website and we have started to track the conversions.
    Basically we have a goal with 3 steps: Account Details (Personal Information) Confirmation (Mobile Confirmation Code) Email ( confirmation link) On the last step (Destination Goal) we send an email to the customer with the account confirmation link, the tracking works perfectly. Our problem is with the Goal Completions on "Traffic Sources" >> "AdWords" >> "Campaigns", Analytics doesn't add the conversions. This problem is related to the email confirmation? There is any solution to overcome this problem? Thank you! yzujFZU.png f4fay1G.png

    | lunacloud
    0

  • Just wondering if you have any advice on the following scenario: Client's GA account was set-up by a previous web developer.  The client's GA account is a user account (not admin).  When we request from the previous web developer that the account access be changed to admin, the web developer says they can't do that as we'll then have​ access to all the other GA accounts within their account. Does this mean we'll have to create a new GA profile for the client and lose all historic GA data? Any guidance greatly appreciated.

    | aoifep
    0

  • Hello folks, I've redesigned a site completely and I ended up changing their CMS to wordpress as well. So their URLs which mostly ended in .html and folder organization have been thrown completely out the window with wordpress' '/' format. I'm just wondering what the best way is to approach retaining all the site's previous "link juice". What should I be doing here? How do I make sure their organic rankings don't fall? (They've left their previous SEO firm so they can't help me out on this). Thanks!

    | seonubblet
    0

  • Hi mozzers, i have a ga account with 40 profiles and none of them are connected to adwords. I would like to connect adwords to just the combined profile and not the other 39 profiles? Is this possible? if it is how would you do it? thanks!

    | Ideas-Money-Art
    0

  • Hi there, searching Google UK for the term 'wireless alarms' returns the following page at position 39'ish - http://www.compoundsecurity.co.uk/security-information/gsm-gprs-alarm-systems The page that should be returned for that search is - http://www.compoundsecurity.co.uk/security-equipment The page being returned by Google at present is not optimised in any way for 'wireless alarms' but the page it should be showing is optimised for that term and the Moz grading tool agrees. The correct page also has a higher PA and 533 inbound links and the page being displayed has a lower PA and only 3 links. Could some kind soul tell me what i am doing wrong please? Thank you Si

    | DaddySmurf
    0

  • Hi there,
    I have a quick question. Does Google analytics track an order two times, if the user buys a product, see the confirmation page and then click refresh/click or back and forward again?
    The order/tracking data must be the same, but i guess the tracking code runs for every refresh and therefore tracks the order two times in Analytics or does analytics know that it is the same order? Someone that can clearify this?Thanks! Regards
    Kasper

    | Webdannmark
    0

  • Further to my question yesterday where all data for Wednesday 31st July 2013 was not showing - the data did reappear yesterday afternoon. But today, all data for yesterday seems odd - across all my projects visitor numbers appear to be around 40% down on the norm.   Sales were normal, so I wonder if this is another glitch - anyone else seeing strange stats in GA for yesterday?

    | FDFPres
    0

  • Hi there, iv been tracking my webmaster tools crawl errors for a while now(6 months) and im noticing some pages that are far gone 404 are still poping out on the crawl errors. - that pages have no data for xml linking, and remote linking are from pages that are far gone 404 also. that pages have 404 error page + redirect to homepage, and google still notice them with old cache content. does someone have a clue why is this happening?

    | Or.Shvartz
    0

  • I purchased a site that has a lot of Backlinks and when I started to make changes like installing google analytics! i suspect the performance in search engine was getting worst because of that, so I removed.
    Now I'm trying MOZ and needs GA,  should I install it again??
    Maybe it analyces the backlinks and tells google, I don't know, is that possible?

    | pparma
    0

  • Looking at my GA stats today for one of my projects and its reporting 0 visitors in the audience overview yesterday - I know for a fact this is incorrect, using the real time viewer I tracked at least 40 people on the site yesterday in the few times I checked. It is also saying 0 visitors today but from real time I can see solid activity all morning. The code is all still present and correct on the page (which you would assume given real time still works), anyone else having weird issues today?  It is only effecting 1 of 12 projects.

    | FDFPres
    0

  • I launched www.over50choices.co.uk 6 weeks ago and have had trouble with google indexing and crawling all pages. It tells me 143 submitted & 129 Indexed, but the site has 166 pages? It still shows the old home page image in GWT - which is v annoying! Whilst the site is verified by GA & HTML Tag, it tells me in the Verification section that "reverification failed" on numerous occasions - they seem correspond with when google trys to process the site map. Is this a coincidence ie verification fails when its trying to process the site map, which in turn is leaving me with an out of date site map and therefore not all my pages submitted or crawled? Or will this not effect the googles ability to crawl the site? Your help please. Ash

    | AshShep1
    0

  • I have 3 advanced segments set up: Branded keywords Non-branded keywords (all) irrelevant non-branded keywords. irrelevant non-branded keywords are keywords where the visitor is not ready to purchase. for example keywords including terms such as "ideas" or "how to"..  these have generated 0 conversions for us, and I want  to track these separately from keywords that have a chance in converting, since the conversion rate between the two groups vary a lot. for the advanced segment "branded" - i listed a listed of keywords pertaining to the company name - using includes, Matching regexp and | (pipe) between keywords for advanced segment "non-branded keywords" - i took the same list and excluded matching regexp | between keywords. **for advanced segments "irrelevant keywords" ** - i took one word as the keyword and used includes, contains, and the keywords..  using OR statement between keywords.  pipe doesn't seem to work with the "contains", and only seems to work with "matching regexp". **What i want to do is  excluded all items from "Irrelevant keywords"  in advanced segment "Non-branded keywords".  but i can't seem to exclude based on another custom segment. **nor can I list  -   [X statement OR (statement y OR statement Z OR statement AB)] any thoughts on handling this logic?

    | S.S.N
    0

  • Hi All, I went through the Whiteboard friday: http://moz.com/blog/top-5-seo-questions-from-customers-whiteboard-friday But still need clarification. One of the site that we manage is http://jaihindkalari.com/ , 1. When we do Google search www.jaihindkalari.com will come up 2. Not yet redirected from non-www to  www 3. All internal links are non-www 4. Google cached non-www 5. page authority ghigh for non-www Do i need to 301 redirect from non-www to www

    | Anandz
    0

  • Hi Guys, One of my clients has this code showing up, and it is receiving data! Is this normal? First  time I ever see such a code! Thanks for clarifying!

    | Ideas-Money-Art
    0

  • Hello Friends Today I just open my analytic dashboard and found changes in analytic metrics like for example “All traffic source view” found keyword instead of source medium. Have look below graph does anyone know why analytic display keywords instead of source medium?  Is it analytic update? Or bugs check with your dashboard and go to “ALL TRAFFIC SOURCE” primary dimension is keyword? yxma

    | CommercePundit
    0

  • Does anyone know of a good tool that analyses backlinks? I have already tried Link Research Tools and found it very useful but it is very expensive. Does anyone know of an alternative that does the same thing, i.e. will tell you what links are causing harm to your site?

    | AAttias
    0

  • On Sunday, my google traffic plummeted. I was getting 320 hits a day from Google on my best days - my site is just about to turn 3 months old so I was thrilled with that. On Sunday it was 110 and I think it is getting worse. Edit: Yep, yesterday was 65. Google Webmasters shows the drop today. One day, my impressions were 5,500 and the next just 1,000. Yikes. My traffic is so depressing now after so much hard work. Is this Google Panda? What can I do? I have no idea why this happened. I am getting several quality backlinks a week, sometimes a day.

    | 2bloggers
    0

  • I have an unexplained drop in google traffic on the 9th July. There are no messages in webmaster tools and no onsite or link building had taken place. In fact there were no changes at all. The only possible thing I can think of is that for some time I have had a problem where the bounce rate for my site was 95% plus in analytics. That data is wrong as the website is converting 1in 10 visitors and for them to  convert the bounce rate would 90% (If EVERY other visitor bounced) as they have to visit several pages to do so. Any help appreciated! b457MPe.png

    | SamCUK
    0

  • I keep getting this error though I have confirmed I have the correct information.  Any recommendations?

    | x3oadmin
    0

  • Today I noticed one of our sub-domains listed in our Google Webmaster Tools Account moved from the 6th position to the 2nd position. Is there a reason for this (perhaps urls/sites listed at the top require the most attention)?

    | Prospector-Plastics
    0

  • Hi. I have a little problem. When I open Google Webmaster Tools I see 3000 clicks (in Traffic - Search queries - Clicks). But when I open Google Analytics I see much more visits from search engine (Google) - it´s 4-5 times more! It´s a huge difference, don´t you think? Do you know, where is the problem? What causes this diffence? thanks a lot

    | mysho
    0

  • Greetings,
    Sometimes you just want to give Google a big slap for making straight forward requests damn impossible. So all i ma trying to ad is point a ppc ad at this Google + account <a>https://plus.google.com/118393512656496298734#118393512656496298734/posts</a> But i get a warning sign saying:
    "The URL must be for a Google+ page, not a personal profile" I then spend half an hour tring to find a Google + page but get no where fast 😞 Warning message illustrated here:
    http://i216.photobucket.com/albums/cc53/zymurgy_bucket/google-page-plus_zps46ff995a.jpg So my question is please how to a get the Google + page for this account:
    <a>https://plus.google.com/118393512656496298734#118393512656496298734/posts</a> Any insights welcome!
    David

    | Nightwing
    0

  • Ciao from Wetherby UK, Ok ive done this a zilion times but since Google analytics upgraded I cant find how to upgarde the tracking code to ecoomerce tracking. Before i would just tick a box and Boomshanka the code would change. Whats got me worried the tracking codes has not modified to ecoomerce is because it looks like this: Heres the tracking dashboard with no sign of ecomm tracking customisations:
    http://i216.photobucket.com/albums/cc53/zymurgy_bucket/wheres-ecom-tracking_zps0ef4b8c6.jpg And i cant see any means to modify it for ecoomerce tracking 😞 Any insights welcome!
    Grazie tanto,
    David

    | Nightwing
    0

  • Hello there, On the 16th of April 2013 our website traffic dropped dramatically. See attached a screenshot of our Google Analytics. Our traffic had been growing steadily for the last 10 years. Our website http://www.wattsandco.com/ Does anyone know what could have caused this? Thanks wBeewWL

    | roberthseo
    0

  • Many of our conversions occur in a customers second visit to the site. Often, a customer will arrive at our site, submit a finance application, leave, and return at a later date to checkout. We are interested in tracking how many of our checkouts come from customers who originally found our site through an organic search result. If a customer enters the site through organic search, leaves, and returns later through an email link or directly entering our URL, will G analytics show that customer as direct or organic origin? Cheers, Ben

    | WSPL
    0

  • Since June 13, 2013, the number of organic search queries containing a plus sign (+) has gone up over 1,000% compared to the previous period on my site in Google Analytics. These plus signs appear to be taking the place of spaces in these search queries (i.e. "word1+word2+word3"). This appears to be almost (or completely) Google organic traffic, not other search engines. Since I highly doubt searcher behavior would change so suddenly, I'm trying to figure out why Google is replacing spaces with plus signs. Is anyone else seeing this? Any ideas?

    | RCF
    0

  • Is there any way around being able to set up 20 goals in Analytics? What if one of my clients want to set up 10 pages with separate actions to track on each page. Will then each actions count as a separate goal? If this is the case, how could I work around creating more than 20 goals? Would I have to look into hiring/buying a third party or separate software? Your help is greatly appreciated.

    | flcity15
    0

  • The Title says it all..I just discovered that the Homepage is not in Google's index anymore. Homepage rankings have plummeted, our top keywords are nowhere to be found but most of keywords from deeper pages have dropped just one or two places. We just change the website design and some content but I strongly believe this is definitely something else due to the fact that it all happened so fast! There is one thing that I have to mention that might have been caused all this..our email client (Outlook) is using a lot of resources from our server and for the last couple of days the website was down quite a lot.
    There are some crawling errors in GWT but the homepage has been crawled because is not there, no other messages. Where should I look for?

    | echo1
    0

  • Hey SEOMoz community, Question, we just purchased a business and while we didn't keep their website content we acquired their URLs and will be rebuilding the site. We've asked for and been denied any historical analytic data e.g. they wont transfer admin rights over to us. Is there anyway to access historical data without being made an admin? or do we start from ground zero. One of the reasons we're being given for not being allowed access is that "Google analytics and the associated keywords are the vendor's intellectual property" - given that we brought the brand doesn't that IP transfer over to us anyways? Thanks, PC
    (Long time forum stalker, first time poster)

    | PC-QSG
    0

  • How do you establish which keywords generated traffic that resulted in goal completions (in GA) ? I thought this would be Reverse Goal Paths but this only goes back as far as the original page. Goal Flow shows the traffic source which is better but not the kw used ? Cheers Dan

    | Dan-Lawrence
    0

  • I am working on an e-commerce website, and our CEO is sure that having target="_blank" in internal search result is boosting the conversion (not sure, but it's not an issue at the moment). The problem is that Google Analytics sees all URLs visited from search results as entrances/direct visits, hence the Booking Funnel Tracking does not work as it was supposed to. Is there any way to recover the tracking? Or we shall get the rid of target="_blank" attribute?

    | apartmentGin
    0

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