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Category: Reporting & Analytics

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

  • Max84


    Bounce rate is a SEO signal, but how Google measures it ? There is any explanation about this ? Does Google uses Analytics ? Maybe time between 2 clics in search results ? Thanks

    | Max84
    0
  • TeachersMutualBank


    I want to track across domains, but also track as a virtual pageview anytime someone clicks on the link to another domain. So currently I have, for example: Checkout Now! As per Google's instructions, I need to have the link set to: Checkout Now! But this will obviously get rid of my virtual pageview. Is there a way I can do both?

    | TeachersMutualBank
    0
  • seoworx123


    What does pages/visits in the SEOMoz traffic indicate?

    | seoworx123
    0
  • apps-foundry


    I'm having a sudden drop in direct visit on 12th January by 50% and never go up again since then. I dont change anything in my website, just regular posting. Could someone give me any idea about this? Thank you

    | apps-foundry
    0
  • Ideas-Money-Art


    Hi mozzers, We just launched a mobile site and I was wondering what are the main steps to follow for gettting your mobile site tracked via GA (m.example.com)? We have a profile for www.example.com GATC: javascript or PHP to install? Should the profile be on a subdomain? What else to consider when implementing a mobile site on GA? Thanks

    | Ideas-Money-Art
    0
  • 352inc


    Has anyone experienced where Google Analytics would track the page visit to a "thank you" page, but not the goal conversion that should result? The goal had worked for a long time as it is as just a goal url with head match. No funnel. Not case sensitive. For about four days now, no conversions have been recorded, but Google Analytics shows hundreds of people visited the page that should trigger the goal. Additionally, we have received the hundreds of leads. A Screaming Frog search shows the code is embedded throughout the site. For the interested, the GA code looks like (and the 8 Xs are the correct number on the site): Am I missing something?

    | 352inc
    0
  • yandl


    Hello! One of the blogs I'm tracking has literally lost like half of the number of external followed links. So, I have two questions really 1) is that common at all? it seems odd that that many would be removed 2) is there a way to see the specific links that were lost? Thanks!
    Kevin

    | yandl
    0
  • biggieshaws


    I have a site with 6000 indexed urls.  1,500 have traffic I feel is valuable and 4,500 with almost no traffic (perhaps less than 10 page views in a year).  These 4500 are inedxed but have 1 or less in bound links. If I retire the pages, will I help or hurt my Domain Authority and separately my rankings that could produce traffic? I'd appreciate any consideration. Jeffrey Strassman www.consultant360.com

    | biggieshaws
    0
  • ugurcanuzer


    Hi everyone, I want to track user registrations with Google Analytics for a customer's website. The thing is after registration visitors are not directed to a specific page, so I can't set it as a goal. I thought of tracking submit button with event tracking, but that data would not be true as a visitor may click it more than once, and there's the login with facebook and twitter thing. Before convincig customer to create a registration confirmation page, I want to make sure there's no other way as they don't want to make any changes to the current website. Any ideas?

    | ugurcanuzer
    0
  • shags38


    If using Google disavow links tool and you disavow links from a 'domain' does that mean that any 'future or new links' from that domain will be blocked? Answer Yes is good if the domain is spammy but bad if the domain was submitted in error ........ Answer NO is good if the domain was submitted in error but bad if the site is spammy. Does anyone have an answer to this please? Also is there a disavow 'undo' request process available? cheers, Mike

    | shags38
    0
  • akansh


    I want to check the keywords position of the entire site just by giving the site URL. Is there any way ?

    | akansh
    0
  • highwayfive


    Hi All, Anyone else seeing major changes in the google.co.uk SERPS results.Across about 12 different clients we have seen gains and loses. Sub pages seems to be suffering more than homepages. Any idea what has been targeted? With think it might be anchor text but were not sure. Noticed first dips on Monday and it has been rolling out across different niches all week. Thanks

    | highwayfive
    0
  • DCochrane


    All my Schema Rich Snippets are being validated in the webmaster tools Rich Snippet tester tool here http://www.google.com/webmasters/tools/richsnippets But when I go take a peek at the new tab in Webmaster tools when I'm signed into my analytics account it shows there are no active Markups on my site. Has anyone else been having this issue? If it says it's working in the Google tool from the link above should I even be worried if its not showing up when I'm signed into my analytics account? Thanks.

    | DCochrane
    0
  • panini


    Hi Mozzers, I'm setting up Google's Site Search on a website. However this isn't for search terms, this will be for people filling in a form and using the POST action to land on a results page. This is similar to what is outlined at http://support.google.com/analytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=1012264 ('<a class="zippy zippy-collapse">Setting Up Site Search for POST-Based Search Engines').</a> However my approach is different as my results appear on a sub-domain of the top level domain. Eg.. user is on www.domain.com/page.php user fills in form submits user gets taken to results.domain.com/results.php The issue is with the suggested code provided by Google as copied below.. Firstly, I don't use query strings on my results page so I would have to create an artificial page which shouldn't be a problem. But what I don't know is how the tracking will work across a sub-domain without the _gaq.push(['_setDomainName', '.domain.com']); code. Can this be added in? Can I also add Custom Variables? Does anyone have experience of using Site Search across a sub-domain perhaps to track quote form values? Many thanks!

    | panini
    0
  • Qon


    Is it possible to get the visitor statistics for a subfolder (example.com/blog/) in Google Analytics? I already have GA tracking set-up like normal, and visitors do get logged, but to see data only for /blog/ I have to go to Content > Site Content > All pages and search for "/blog/". Should I create a new profile in Google Analytics? Or is there a better way to only see stats for a subfolder?

    | Qon
    0
  • nicklemonpromotions


    Hi there, I have tried the tools here, and they are BRILLIANT but maybe to much for me. I just wondered if anyone in the UK had time to give me some advice. A lot of my customers are small businesses (mainly trades, like plumbers, builders etc etc), and I am trying to find best practices for getting them more quality traffic amidst a lot of competition. One customer I am working with currently has 50+ competitiors for his small plumbing business that are within 5 miles of him and have an effective web prescence. In those circumstances (take it as read that I have killed myself creating quality content that I am proud of for this client), does anyone have any killer advice for me that could make my sites more effective ? If anyone does have the time I am more than willing to PM the URL I am working with at the moment. Thanks for your time..

    | nicklemonpromotions
    0
  • yandl


    The rankings in the campaigns appear to be limited to tracking terms in the top 50. is there a way to view past that? I understand that for the most part no one is ever going to see past that so 50+ might as well be 5000. But a client has requested for a handful of key terms. If this is not possible, can someone recommend another tool I might use? Thank you! Kevin

    | yandl
    0
  • BenFox


    Possibly a really stupid question. Is Page Rank logarithmic or exponential? I've seen a lot of people talking about Page Rank saying it's logarithmic but when they describe it they're actually talking about an exponential scale. (Apologies if I'm showing a basic misunderstanding in mathematical knowledge - I studied Drama)

    | BenFox
    0
  • chiplab


    Good afternoon, Thank you in advance for your help - this is my first post and I am new to all of this. Situation:  I've setup 301 redirects for www.thechiplab.com to my new site www.chiplab.com (recently launched e-commerce site on Magento) through cPanel. Problem:  Some of my best links are to my old ''https:" www.thechiplab.com secure domain (ex. http://techcrunch.com/2006/12/22/why-doesnt-cafepress-use-flash/) and are not being "passed" on to the new domain. (Open Site Explorer) Is it possible to recover any of the PR from the old secure site? Thanks again, Chase

    | chiplab
    0
  • DAlondon


    The best performing page on my website www.danielalexandra.com/personal-training/ has suddenly completely fallen off the google radar and all of my ranking results for keywords have dropped significantly as a result. My domain is only 4/5 months old but was already becoming relatively competitive and generating some interest until this? Any ideas as to why this may have happened?

    | DAlondon
    0
  • vmotuz


    Hi there, I have listings that all link to external sites. In order to track how many times each link was clicked I coded a redirect script that simply redirects to the respective url. www.mysite.com/go/123/ - redirects to another site www.mysite.com/go/541/ - redirects to a different site Is there anything I should or should not do from seo stand point such as blocking the /go directory in robots or adding a no-follow tag to links? I'd appreciate your advice. Thanks

    | vmotuz
    0
  • jj3434


    Hi A greater and greater % of clicks is showing as "not provided" - does any one know of any good external tracking software which will show this information? Thanks

    | jj3434
    0
  • jimmy0225


    Hi, This site has been so helpful in receiving not only answers to my questions but explanations too.  With so many opinions and motives on the internet explanations help one to decide in which way to go.  Here is my dilimna, as always, all input is welcome and very appreciated! I have a site that has more links to www.domain.com and less to http://domain.com , however, for our local search and I do not know why - our http://domain.com has better position in search engines and (www.domain.com has way more links) Is there any reason for this? However, in generic term, (no locality mentined) our www.domain.com shows up in the results. My site is hosted on Yahoo webhositng which does not allow for .htaccess 301 redirects, someone on this board was really nice and has alerted me to Godaddy (my domain is hosted there) and introduced me to a DNS 301.  I called Godaddy and they said it would be possible, and also told me that I would lose all my email with Yahoo.  I have managed to backup the email and am leaning towards the Godaddy- DNS redirect, just wanted to know if I would see a big difference in SEO. Links (different root domains) currently - http://domain.com 55, www.domain.com 1000 plus. Thanks for any input, if amnyone knows.

    | jimmy0225
    0
  • Rank4Stuff


    I used to have only 5 keywords that I tracked, but I have just added about 100 more. But when I look in the overview, it says: "Rankings Updated Every: Tuesday Last Data Update: 01/07/2013" It is not Tuesday yet, but seems that it was updated on January 7th. Will I have to wait another week? How can I force a re-check? I'm in rush to get this data 😞

    | Rank4Stuff
    1
  • VITALBGS


    For the past few weeks I’ve been trying to figure out why my client's site is not indexed on bing and yahoo search engines. My Google analytics is telling me I’m getting traffic (very little traffic) from Bing almost daily but Bing webmaster tools is telling me I’ve received no traffic and no pages have been indexed into Bing since the beginning of December. At once point I was showing ranking in Bing for only one keyword then all of a sudden none of my pages were being indexed and I now rank for nothing for that website.  From Google I’m getting over 1200 visits per month.  I have been doing everything I can to possibly find the culprit behind this issue. I feel like the issue could be a redirect problem. In webmaster tools on Bing I’ve used “Fetch as Bingbot” and every time I use it I get a Status of “Redirection limit reached.”. I also checked the CRAWL Information and it’s saying all the URL’s to the site are under 301 redirect. A month or so ago the site was completely revamped and the canonical URL was changed from non www to www. I have tried manually adding pages to be indexed multiple times and Bing will not index any of the sites pages. I  have submitted the sitemap to Bing and I am now at a loss. I don’t know what’s going on and why I can’t get the site listed on Bing. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated. Thanks,
    Stephen

    | VITALBGS
    0
  • Resultify


    Hi folks I read from various sources that if you setup goals in Google Analytics each of these goals can only be fulfilled once per visit. Also some sources suggesting that only one goal from each goal group can be fulfilled per visit. On our site we have a goal for external links since this provides value to partners. Some users do open an external link in a new tab, then come back to the main site. Any further goal completions would then not get tracked. Since we apply a result based payment model for our work this means we are literally loosing money. Anyone has official info from Google on this? Can it be configured? How long is a visit? Thanks a million and have a great day. Fredrik

    | Resultify
    0
  • topchinaseo


    Hi, friends In google analytics , we can see search traffic from google, but is it possible to deeply see from which local google? eg: .com , .uk, .hk etc? Thanks alots
    Boson

    | topchinaseo
    0
  • ScriptiLabs


    Over the last month, 40% of a client's search traffic as resulted from a phrase that they are not even ranking for in the top 100; nor are they popping up on PPC ads for it. How is this happening? I feel like I am missing something very obvious.

    | ScriptiLabs
    0
  • lauralyons


    can someone help thanks x

    | lauralyons
    0
  • IMM


    Webmaster Tools  reported a "Big traffic change for top URL" for one of our sites about three and a half weeks ago. WT traffic is 0 since that date. However, our analytics data shows no significant decline in traffic. The WT alert was received on Nov. 16. There was a significant dip in GA visits Nov. 22 but it recovered and I'm seeing no other indication that this is a penalty. What could be going on?

    | IMM
    0
  • JoshBowers2012


    I am a web developer first, and SEO second. I've been under the impression that a good web developer created well organized and efficient sites. Over the last couple years I've been diving more into the advanced SEO world. Mostly focusing on keyword research, competition analyzation, and trying to help conversion increase. For the most part I have been successful with the clients that have hired me for SEO. I usually first start by doing keyword and competition research. After that I advise them on the content they should create. We discuss the end goal for all viewers and the end goal for each page type (front page, blog posts, interior page, and specific pages). We design the site around these end goals. We launch the site. I came up with an infographic with spaceships describing these steps as: Research, Plan, Build, Launch, Navigate. Somewhat based on scientific method. I haven't done a lot of link building yet though as for the most part I've been encouraging clients to first create content and focus on creating a community and relationship with people using whatever means they feel they are capable of actually using on a regular basis (facebook, google+, twitter, etc). I make sure to add schema code, 301 old urls, site is optimized, urls are structured well, site is interlinked. We also look at direct advertising and whatever other methods we can that would be positive for their end goal. But some of my clients I just can't seem to make much headway with. One sells medical insurance to small businesses, and also life insurance. For him I have focused on local targeting, and writing articles about topics which have the most possibilities for traffic in his market (it seems to be an incredibly competitive market). The other is a Dating & Life Coach. For her I am targeting locally as well, and also encouraging her to write articles for search phrases she has the best chances of ranking in. Again though, this market seems very competitive. She ranks in the top 20 for a few articles now (she has written about 6-8 since we started). She gets very few visits from these articles though (of course she is not in the top 3). My worry is this: For the articles she has a 100% bounce rate and less than 30 seconds viewer time. I'd like to see more data over time with more viewers but my question is: What else can I do? And what if the content she writes people just don't find useful? Same goes for the insurance guy... Maybe I'm just looking for reassurance I'm going in the right direction.

    | JoshBowers2012
    0
  • Caryn


    Hey there.  Could use some help in figuring on why the event tracking code on this site http://www.baltimoreareahondadealers.com is not working.  There is code on all external domain links but none seem to be firing.  Inspect all the map links to view code ie. Search New Honda Inventory What am I missing? Thanks so much. -Caryn

    | Caryn
    0
  • jimmy0225


    Hi, Happy Holidays to all!  Although, this is not Thanksgiving, I am very thankful for becoming a member of this site.  I ahve learned so much. Here is yet another question hping to have answered by the pundits of this SEOMOZ: I have a site built on site builder and hosted on Yahoo Hosting which does not allow 301 Redirects; I was fortunate enough to have someone help opn this site explain to me how to use Godaddy (they are my domain provide) to 301 through forwarding, work great! My http://domain.com now directs to www.domain.com , the only problem I am having now is, on :sitebuilder" the index page is classified as index.html, thus providing duplicate content again.  Can you do two redirects through Godaddy?  In othert words, my http://domain.com/ goes to www.domain.com/ eliminating duplicent content, but now I have another URL - http:..domain.com/index.html how do i get rid of that to prevent dup content. Any feed back would be great, Happy Holidays! Jimmy

    | jimmy0225
    0
  • jamie_netsitemarketing.com


    We are looking for tools to help us repair broken backlinks, those with 404 error.  We have used the Open Site Explorer tool to create a CSV file from our client's URL. We read the "Fixing Crawl Diagnostic Issues", but don't see how to "find the 404ed URL", nor do we see a "referral column" to scroll to. What steps should we take to locate the broken 404 linkages? What steps can we take to streamline repairs?

    | jamie_netsitemarketing.com
    0
  • DCochrane


    I have a client saying that there is a way  to link 3 separate websites (A website for each department of a company) in Google Webmaster tools to tell Google it's basically one site but really its 3. Or to tell Google it's the same company and all the sites are one. I have never heard of this & I don't see the point in making 3 separate small sites & "linking" them as one in Webmaster tools. Is there in fact a way? Am I out to lunch on what they might be referring to? I am recommending they create one larger authority site with a page on each department & earn links for each department page & provide informative unique content for each page. Thoughts? Thanks for the help!

    | DCochrane
    0
  • Nightwing


    Buon Giorno from 4 degrees C mostly cloudy Wetherby UK 🙂 I love Google Analytics but I'm bogged down with analytics report writting. I'm looking for a web analytics softeare package that: 1. White Label ie we can brand the reports up
    2. Bespoke ie i can pick and choose what I report on
    3. Automated ie I can set a time & date when the client receives the report. Any recommendations appreciated 🙂 Grazie tanto, David

    | Nightwing
    0
  • trophycentraltrophiesandawards


    Hi,  I have used open site explorer to review our back links, but I don't know how to determine which ones are bad?  For example, I think I am getting penalized for links from strictlygifts.com, but not sure.  StrictlyGifts is a second site of ours that has a web hosting plan (our main site does not have hosting - long story).  We use this site to store things that link to our main site, trophycentral.com.  As an example, we have several online catalogs with hundreds of pages that link to products on trophy central.  I have a gut feeling that this is hurting us, but I don't know how to confirm it.  I can easily remove the links but don't want to if they are helping us. Can anyone help?  Thanks!!!

    | trophycentraltrophiesandawards
    0
  • jobtardis


    I have job portal site , i have idea to try alexa  certification , Alexa certification will be useful ?

    | jobtardis
    0
  • Ideas-Money-Art


    Hi mozzers, We launched a website 2 months ago and when monitoring Organic data on GA we had an average of 23% bounce rate like a month ago but the last 2 weeks I noticed that bounce rate=0%. This is very weird especially that we haven't modified the existing pages and that multiple keywords show an average site duration of 0 seconds. Any thoughts about this discrepancy? Do you think that there is an issue with the GATC implemented? Thanks

    | Ideas-Money-Art
    0
  • TigerSheep


    Hi there! Our site hosts paid training videos, and has a javascript menu that lists EVERY video on the site, and it is our most-used method of navigation. The menu is structured to look like the business software our training videos cover, so it's very intuitive for users. That said, since we currently have so many videos EVERY page has more than 250 links. The only way to get this down to under 100 as SEOMOZ recommends is to delete/hide the link from being seen by search engines. What should I do? Is the menu worth being visible to search engines? businessonetraining.com

    | TigerSheep
    0
  • JSOC


    All, I manage a site that unfortunately crashed due to a server issue in late October for about 3 hours. Prior to the crash, traffic was the best it had ever been in the 3+ year history of the site. As you might expect, since the crash traffic has gone gradually down and is now about 15% off pre-crash numbers. I understand that when a site crashes, it disrupts the crawling process and can disrupt traffic (in my case rich snippets were thrown off for days) but would love to hear experiences any of you have had in similar situations. How much did traffic drop after a crash? When did it recover? Other thoughts? Thanks, John

    | JSOC
    0
  • bernardovailati


    Me and my team have just finished a website which will replace 22 old ones (6 main domains and 16 sub-domains, 19 in wordpress and 3 in Joomla). This means more than 20,000 links that we're trying to redirect with the most granularity possible. But we're experiencing a lot of conflicts because of the quantity and variety of links and the interference of Wordpress. And I'm having trouble finding which links are working and which aren't. I have a URL list in a plain .txt file for every website, is there a tool that can check these links for me? I've tested many wordpress plugins, but I didn't find a good one. Thanks!

    | bernardovailati
    0
  • KateV


    I am trying to follow the advice in this whiteboard friday video http://www.seomoz.org/blog/how-big-is-your-long-tail-whiteboard-friday of grouping keywords based on volume of traffic they send each month e.g. 100+, 50-99, 10-49, <10. I'm probably being super dumb, but how do I do this with advanced segments in GA? Thanks.

    | KateV
    0
  • Danieljacobree


    Google Maps is not passing referral data (URLs, not KWs).  Google+ Local is referring, but nothing from maps. Maps referrals appear to be coming across as direct. Any ideas? We haven't found anything online, one of the guys at the office documented what we did find, using Chrome's debugger - http://manofactionmetrics.com/2012/11/02/google-maps-not-passing-any-referral-data/

    | Danieljacobree
    0
  • tact


    Sorry if this has been answered but I can't seem to get a straight answer to my questions by searching around. How is traffic referred by Google Images counted in Google Analytics? I know it used to be referral traffic from google.com/imgres. A lot of things I have read say that it should all be under google/organic now, but my site still gets referral traffic from google.com/imgres, so that can't be. However I also get traffic as google/organic that I am pretty sure is from image search, because we don't rank for the keyword normally, but we do for image search. What's the deal? How is traffic from an embedded image in a regular result page counted? How can I segment my image search traffic better? It would be great to see image search traffic as it's own medium. I found a script here -- http://jrom.net/google-images-in-google-analytics -- that looks promising, has anyone used it or can recommend another way? I haven't used the GA API very much so I want to make sure the script is kosher and won't screw up my numbers.

    | tact
    0
  • Benjamin379


    Hi, Today I noticed that my website is ranking one place lower than a competitor in Google UK ,despite my site having a stronger domain authority and page authority.  Is there a plausible reason for this, i'm slightly confused? Thanks,

    | Benjamin379
    0
  • GOODSIR


    Our client's website is non-canonicalized (www.example.com & example.com load the same thing). Google seems to have made a preference for the www, but canonicalizing to www breaks their Flash website. All we're really trying to do at this time is install Google Analytics for them. What's the smartest way to make sure that both www.example.com and example.com are treated exactly the same by Google Analytics? Google Developers: Domains & Directories states that by default visit data will be separately collected between the two domains, although I found no references to the common www/naked domain issue. In stackoverflow: Does google analytics combine naked domains with the www subdomain? Török Gábor says, "Yes, users will be tracked, but the same visitor coming from www.datalookups.com and datalookups.com will be counted as two different visitors." On the same page, Open SEO says, "This is completely false: www.domain.tld and domain.tld are treaded just the same, and get the same value for the HASH code (the number at the start of each __utm cookie). This an exception: every other subdomain.domain.tld will be handeld as a distinct web site". Can any Analytics experts help me sort this out? Thanks!

    | GOODSIR
    0
  • acs111


    Just want to get peoples idea on how the best way to measure the success of the best articles on a website/blog. I'm looking at a few different options that can give each author a fair chance without being overlooked. For instance if we just look at the most clicked on article then its not fair on articles published in months with slower traffic like January. So should we measure the success by a)most page visited after an article view b)most clicked on article by month(this would be unfair for slower traffic months) c)most shared via Social d)article with most new visits It would be great to get everyone's expert opinion on this.

    | acs111
    0
  • khemistry


    Ran into something interesting a week ago - the same Google Analytics code was installed on two different sites by accident. The account was reporting traffic from both domains. Haven't found a definitive answer on how to stop this yet if it were to be used maliciously?

    | khemistry
    0
  • StevenHowe


    Hi everyone, I know this isn't the 'Google help forum' but I'm stuck and I hope someone here might be able to point me in the right direction. For a period last month - Thursday 22nd to Sunday 25th November Google Analytics reports our site as having 0 visits. In addition we have two days which were strangely low - Weds 21st 105 visits, Weds 28th Nov 78 visits. We normally get between 1000 and 1200 visits on a weekday from a global audience (I know that was the Thanksgiving weekend, but the US accounts for ~10% of total traffic). Has anyone else had this problem? If so, what did you do? The "report a bug" board on the Google help forum has a few entries like this, people with 0 visits shouting "help!" into the void with no response. Ideas?

    | StevenHowe
    0

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