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Category: Reporting & Analytics

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

  • kylesuss


    For some reason I can't get Google Analytics to pick up my URL tags, am I doing something wrong? http://www.example.com/?utm_source=carscom&utm_campaign=3rdparty&utm_medium=referral

    | kylesuss
    0
  • kimwetter


    I've been confused by some URLs that are showing up as errors in our GWT account. They seem to just be randomly generated alphanumeric strings that Google is reporting as 404 errors. The pages do 404 because nothing ever existed there or was linked to. Here are some examples that are just off of our root domain: /JEzjLs2wBR0D6wILPy0RCkM/WFRnUK9JrDyRoVCnR8= /MevaBpcKoXnbHJpoTI5P42QPmQpjEPBlYffwY8Mc5I= /YAKM15iU846X/ymikGEPsdq 26PUoIYSwfb8 FBh34= I haven't been able to track down these character strings in any internet index or anywhere in our source code so I have no idea why Google is reporting them. We've been pretty vigilant lately about duplicate content and thin content issues and my concern is that there are an unspecified number of urls like this that Google thinks exist but don't really. Has anyone else seen GWT reporting errors like this for their site? Does anyone have any clue why Google would report them as errors?

    | kimwetter
    0
  • debi_zyx


    I changed the URLs of some pages recently (because the same thing that affects the internal anchor text also affects the URL - grr...) but considered it not a big deal because even if I looked at the source code of the old URL, the canonical tag was now pointing to the new one. The question is - if I had URL destination goals set up for those URLs in Google Anlaytics, do I now have to change them? Or does Google somehow know that anyone getting to the new URL is the equivalent of someone getting to the old URL because of the canonical tag that exists on the old URL source code? I still do see goal conversions for some of the old URLs even since I changed them - but it could be that people are still somehow finding the old URL somewhere - or that Google only reindexed it a week or so after I made the change. Any light to shed? Thanks in advance, Aviva B

    | debi_zyx
    0
  • inmonova


    Hi! I would like to ask if anyone has any ideas on why the second website in this analysis is getting position 2 on google and website 1 is getting position 5: http://www.opensiteexplorer.org/comparisons?site=bonobetfair.info&comparisons[0]=www.bonobetfair.com&=Compare The metrics indicate that the first website is clearly superior in (almost) all metrics. Why could this be?

    | inmonova
    0
  • seoug_2005


    If a visitor comes to my site from 3 different traffic sources within a session, does GA report shows 1 visit and 2 returning visitors ? Previously ( before Google made changes in session )  it used to show 1 visit and zero returning visitors. right ?

    | seoug_2005
    0
  • haydennz


    I have a website which "houses" five different and completely separate departments, so the content is separated by subfolders. e.g. domain.com/department1 domain.com/department2 etc. and each have their own individual top navigation menus. There is an "About Us" section for each department which has about 6 subpages (Work for us, What we do, Awards etc.)  but the problem is that the content for each department is exactly the same. The only difference is the navigation menu and the breadcrumbs. This isn't ideal as a change to one page means having to make the change to all 5 and from an SEO perspective it's duplicate content x5 (apart from the Nav). One solution I can see is to have the "About Us" section moved to the root level (domain.com/about-us) and have a generic nav, possibly with the department names on it. The only problem with this is that it disrupts the user journey if they are forced away from the department that they're chosen. Basically i'm looking for suggestions or examples of other sites that have got around this problem, I need inspiration! Any help would be greatly appreciated.

    | haydennz
    0
  • sportstvjobs


    I was ranked #5 for the keyword "Become a Sportscaster" - had been in the top 10 for months, then all of a sudden dropped to #46. I haven't touched this page in a few months, so I don't think I messed anything up. Any thoughts on why such a dramatic drop would happen? Brian Clapp Founder, SportsTVJobs.com

    | sportstvjobs
    0
  • SEOteamfl


    In this redirect rule, what does the "$1" mean? RewriteCond %{HTTP_HOST} ^(oldsiteaustin|www.oldsiteaustin) [NC] RewriteRule ^(.*)$ http://austin.newsite.com/$1 [R=301,L]

    | SEOteamfl
    0
  • CIEEwebTeam


    I am working on developing goals for 2012. I will be doing several SEO projects, including one on a website for study abroad programs. Currently, nonbranded organic search is 15.49% of our visits and in 2010, it was 15.02%. I am wondering if anyone has any advice or knows of a benchmark percentage that could help me set an attainable goal. Thank you!!

    | CIEEwebTeam
    0
  • Benji87


    Hi all, I run a site called Applicable Jobs (http://www.applicablejobs.com) and from analyising my analytics I notice my bounce rate is unusually high at around 85%. I'm keen to get this right down as I've read recently that a high bounce rate is a metric Google uses in determining positioning in the SERPs. I honestly don't think it's the quality of my content because I feel it's genuinely useful to my target audience but I'm wondering if the way my jobs list is generated is causing an issue. At the moment I have my jobs listings generated through javascript so I can have nice effects and use a bit of ajax but if Google crawls it, it obviously won't be able to see the listings. So I'm wondering if when a user comes to the site and they click on one of the job listings, does the Google analytics code recognise that click because that link is generated through javascript? Thanks

    | Benji87
    0
  • Westernoriental


    in one of my projects the expected vistors is around 23000 weve got the keyword onto the first page position 3 and weve only recieved 30 vistits this month, my qustion is why? are the local searches from google analtics that tell you thier are 23000 searches for that keyword false please can someone shed some light on this, my client is totally over the moon with his ranking but cant believe that hes only recieving 30 visits  this month from what we thought was a million dollar keyword

    | Westernoriental
    0
  • mickey11


    I made 18 websites, and have used a analytics web app called piwik. You can google it, but basically it is like google analytics. I have done nothing for the websites no links, no updates. I did do the onpage optimization extremely well. At first I had daily traffic over all the websites at about 200, then like a month went by and it was at 100, then another month has gone by it is hovering around 30 visits -- This is total traffic across all the websites. In addition my websites were ranking much better and alot of them were coming up together in the results in a single google query, now this is no longer true, only one or maybe two come for the same google query and they come up lower in the serp ranking ie. before it was 1st place now 3rd for example, so traffic has decreased respectively. Anybody can tell me what I can do, to regain the positions and traffic I had before.

    | mickey11
    0
  • seoug_2005


    Most of our  traffic is from Referring sites, and in referring sites, job sites are sending most of the traffic. How can we segment traffic from job sites. There are about 40 such sites. We would like to receive a report which shows traffic excluding from these job sites.

    | seoug_2005
    0
  • Andy.Drinkwater


    Greetings! I actually don't have a definitive answer to this so wish to throw it out to the community for thoughts and feedback. I have a client who we shall call "Site 1", but they also have a job board, we shall call "Site 2". A product of their own success, they have a high bounce rate with visitors landing on Site 1, seeing a job they want to apply for and bouncing straight off to Site 2. The problem is that this is resulting in Google seeing some of these pages as having bounce rates of 80% to 100%, based on this formula: Bounce rate = total number of visits viewing only one page / total number of visits Now, I hate anything black hat or grey hat so wish to know how you would deal with this... If the results from Site 2 were displayed in a new framed page on Site 1, would this still be classed as a bounce? If when they click on a job on Site 1, they were taken to an intermediate page on Site 1 saying "Thank you, you are being redirected to your chosen job" for 5 seconds before being taken to Site 2, would this be classed as a bounce? Perhaps the job they wish to apply for 'pulled' from Site 2 and actually displayed in a new page on Site 1 would be a better way to go? I think that option 1 might work, sure that number 3 would but not so sure about number 2, but look forward to your comments and thoughts. Regards, Andy

    | Andy.Drinkwater
    0
  • SamBuck


    Hi Guys I am new to this community and finding loads of informative stuff here. The keyword difficulty tool looks very interesting. I think google keyword tool competetion field is based on PPC competetion? Will i be right in saying that the moz keyword difficulty tool measures top 10 ranking pages, their age, backlinks etc?

    | SamBuck
    0
  • lance-174449


    I just ran the Site Explorer on my site (myeyedr.com) and it reported that there are no internal links on www.myeyedr.com or myeyedr.com.  However, there were 20 internal followed links on www.myeyedr.com/index.aspx. I'm guessing this is hurting my SEO.  Any suggestions?

    | lance-174449
    0
  • Mont


    A couple of months ago, I read about a new web stats application that is real time but more importantly let's you track user actions on a page (i.e. which buttons were clicked for example).  This information would obviously be very helpful in continuing to improve site performance.  Anyone have suggestions or know the name of this application?  I do not mind paying but am not looking for an enterprise class application.

    | Mont
    0
  • 011100110110010


    So I've been monitoring analytics to see where our clients are ranking for terms that have brought visitors to the site over the last month to find that the website isnt ranking in the top 100 for that keyword. What are your thoughts on this? Why do you think this could happen? One of the keywords has brough over 700 visitors in the last month yet is not in the top 100 for this term. I've also looked Google Webmaster Tools and have found that the exact same term hasn't had 700 impressions let alone 700 click throughs! Weird! Cheers, Sean

    | 011100110110010
    0
  • 190west


    I need help. Scenario: Microsite: www.example.com Prospect clickc "buy" button and is taken to 3rd party ecommerce cart (e.g. shop.domain.com) Questions: Will the Google Analytics Code sample below allow us to track what we need? We need to exact syntax code for the micro site. What is the specific code that needs to be added on the 3rd party shopping cart pages.

    | 190west
    0
  • treefrogseo


    'ello SEOMozers 🙂 I've been implementing some awesomely search engine friendly 301'd domains for clients and they work great but I seem to have missed the point where I track said domains in some fashion and come here to ask the question --> how are you all tracking refers from 301'd domains that are pointed to your main hubs? Currently our practice in-house is to alias them in our servers then use .htaccess rules to 301 them to the 1 domain to-rule-them-all but Google Analytics doesn't recognize them as different domains with that plan of action and there goes my refer tracking. Is there a super-star way to use the Google URL Builder and combine that with the above plan of action or a better plan? Has anyone else implemented something else more awesome-er that could help a girl out? Much thanks and Happy Thursday!

    | treefrogseo
    0
  • chrisfree


    I've setup a goal funnel but am having an issue when I look at the funnel visualization. It doesn't appear to be recognizing the 1st step of the funnel that I've defined in the goal edit page. The "Property Listing page view" is located at /listings/xxx where xxx is the number of the property. Within the funnel, I've added /listings/*, but when I go to see the funnel visualization, I see 0 counts for this step (even though it clearly shows on the entrance page to the left "/listings/622, etc". I've attached a .pdf with a few images to help make this clearer. Any thoughts? CRD-Funnel.pdf

    | chrisfree
    0
  • mascotmike


    I am getting really fed up with how unreliable Google Analytics data is. Also, because I have several large sites I can't use the goal tracking or conversion funnel reports. What are the best alternatives to Google Analytics?

    | mascotmike
    0
  • DmitryP


    I have been hitting my head again the wall trying to figure out why Google does not move my page up. All the SEOMOZ numbers show that the page has higher authority than the competition, more links, more domain authority, older domain, and higher Page rank. In addition the page is error free and I've gotten a W3C HTML 4.01 approval. About a month ago We were at #10 , then after the changes I've made to content and the page Google moved the page to #8, Now the Page is back to #9. I've done plenty of SEO to drive traffic to the page and created some very powerful and quality links. However, it seems like the page is being punished for something. Much weaker competitors are outranking our page and I am not sure why. On page optimization, title tags, Meta Tags, keyword density, etc - everything is there. In fact I have a check list that I go by and everything is by the book. Not only that, one competitor now shows up twice. First the domain and then specific page. I've looked into specific page and all they did is create 600 internal links from their own website. So now they are number #2 and #3 If anyone can take a look and give me an idea of what is going on and maybe suggest Keyword: Laser Marking Url: http://tinyurl.com/3nt3g2h Any help would be appreciated..

    | DmitryP
    0
  • nomad-202323


    Hi Guys....i keep seeing this in my analytics..can someone tell me what it is? 146w.bay146.mail.live.com thanks for your time

    | nomad-202323
    0
  • seoug_2005


    Hello, Regarding recent change in how Google now defines a session... If a user visits a site from a different traffic  source (say  Google and Bing ) within 30 minutes, would that show 2 visits now ? Was earlier it considered 1 visit ? Also, sessions ends "at the end of the day"   It can be different for different users ? How does Google defines end of the day ? for USA time ? Thanks

    | seoug_2005
    0
  • seoug_2005


    How can i obtain information ( i mean whatever information i can get ) about a visitor, who has completed a Goal on website. The information could be - Where the visitor came ( country ) Keyword typed by the visitor to come to Goal page and any other information which could be obtained ?

    | seoug_2005
    0
  • eTundra


    Ever since Google Analytics changed their session parameters August 12th I have seen a 20% jump in organic traffic & bounce rates along with a decline in pages/visit and conversion rate. To be clear, I don't put a whole heck of a lot of stock in these metrics as stand-alone indications of how my site is performing.  I'm just trying to get to the bottom of this blip. I noticed some other people mentioned a similar phenomenon in other SEO forums and blog comments, but nobody seems to be talking about this here at SEOMoz (unless I just haven't looked in the right place). I'm not saying the change I noticed has anything to do with the session update, I'm just wondering if anyone else has experienced something similar so that I can either cross it off the list of possible causes or explore further.

    | eTundra
    0
  • ChrisKolmar


    Anyone have their google analytics go straight crazy on Thursday, 8/11/2011? 30% increase in visits No increase in visitors Huge drop in pageviews and time site Higher bounce rate More return users

    | ChrisKolmar
    0
  • augustos


    Hello folks, Before our domain: <cite>www.convertisseurvideo.net</cite> Keyword: convertisseur video ( convert your video ) is at the first(page) google.fr for this keyword search. Right now, its at second page, really dropped. And our CTR = 1% . How can we improve the CTR? Any toughts ? Thanks. ss.JPG

    | augustos
    0
  • AsafY


    Hi, in the last couple of days I've seen the following changes in my analytics: about 35% increase in overall traffic(both organic and ppc) new visitors dropped about 20%(both organic and ppc) bounce rate increased in about 10%(both organic and ppc) I haven't done any changes to the analytics code nor any other big change to the website. I'm obviously pleased with the increase in traffic but worried about the fact that it is mostly from returning visitors. I just want to make sure that nothing went bad so I can catch this on time, any advice on what to look for would be great.Thanks, Asaf

    | AsafY
    0
  • urbanscooters


    I'm looking for a tool that will analyze a webpage for a specific keyword phrase and deliver good recommendations as to what I can do (on page and off page) to increase the Google ranking for that keyword phrase. I'm trying IBP now, but so far the results haven't been good. Any suggestions?

    | urbanscooters
    0
  • brianmcc


    So we have a great business. Let's say: Service.com. And years ago we launched a great blog. Let's call it ServiceDiscussion.com. So, both are PR5 sites. The BUSINESS gets about 50k page views a month. But the BLOG is getting about 100k page views a month. So, my question is... is it time to fold the blog into the business domain? Let's say we did a 301 redirect and turned it into Service.com/blog. We'd be folding all this extra traffic into the business domain. Would the google juice be worth doing this?

    | brianmcc
    0
  • websearchseo


    Hi, I have a clients website that I have been working on for a few months now. On-page SEO for home page is A for all target keywords. All Domain / subdomain / external link data etc. much stronger than all competition. But approx 3 months ago (before Panda update) all home page rankings (except 1 keyword) dropped out sight in Google rankings. 3 months later, still can't work out why. Sometimes rankings come back onto page 9 or so then drop out again. Deeper pages are not effected, just the Home page. Looks like a Google penalty to me but can't work out why. Any suggestions would be gratefully received. Website is - www.marrikashairextensions.com Many thanks

    | websearchseo
    0
  • seoug_2005


    i would like to  exclude all traffic coming from India using  Advanced Segment in Google Analytics. How do i go about it ?  Will it be applied to future traffic also ?

    | seoug_2005
    0
  • dsexton10


    I am trying to learn the basics of tracking outbound links with this javascript code set up on this url http://queenofhats.com/links.php I think I have a bug in my javascript that tracks clicks on an outbound link. http://www.portlandmaine.com When A person clicks on the "Portland Maine" link, in theory it should create a virtual pageload of a page called "portland_maine". I have clicked on the link, but when I filter  on "portland"  in the Top Content section of Google Analyitcs, there are is no record of the click. So I think my javascript code has a bug. Any comment on the javascript would be most welcome. I just noticed that I have \ before /links. Is the "" the source of the problem? Thanks!!

    | dsexton10
    0
  • vijayvasu


    Hey Mozzers, In the past week 8 of my keywords have drastically dropped and I have no idea why. We had  been doing link building campaign and things were lookign good. We stopped it and crash, all the kerword rankings dropped. Would be awesome if someone couls shed some light onto this one? the site in question is www.gunshotdigital.com thank you so much!

    | vijayvasu
    0
  • dseasterling


    My client has selected 10 keywords that they want to rank on the first page of Google for. Is 10 keywords too many to try and rank for? I have heard that you should focus on top 5 keywords instead.

    | dseasterling
    0
  • robertrRSwalters


    Hey Guys, I don't know if anyone can help or not, but my CMS support seem to not be interested in helping me configure the GA Async code for whatever reason. I am pretty sure the code is firing twice on the site and is masking the true bounce rate. I want to maintain tracking of e commerce transactions and event tracking, but It is beyond me how to configure the A sync code to track these events accurately. I do not want to start hap haphazardly experimenting, so I am asking for help instead. At present our CMS has to have GA tracking enabled on some code in the site, I imagine this populates the GA with the transaction info. here is a link to the support forum I am using to try to find a solution. http://www.ecommercetemplates.com/support/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=81704&whichpage=2 I have been over the GA forums too. Any and all help would be greatly appreciated.

    | robertrRSwalters
    0
  • danlae


    Anyone have any experience as to what effect google +1 has on ranking? Trying to figure out what impact it might have. Ecommerce site in norway selling childrens clothing. Atm we are ranking 25th for main targetted word childrens clothing (barneklær in norwegian). on google.no this has a difficulty of 34. None of main competitors have any amount of google +1's on their site. Lets say if I in some way could manage to get 100 ppl to push +1 button. Would this affect our ranking at all ? Might be impossible to answer but if anyone has thoughts about it I am interested. Thanks

    | danlae
    0
  • seanmccauley


    We are trying to optimise for Google Shopping and therefore would like to be able to monitor traffic to site from this source? How can this be done in Google Analytics? Thanks

    | seanmccauley
    0
  • CraigAddyman


    Hey Does anyone know of a way to set up a custom report in GA to show year on year data? Ideally even better would be a way to pull data using the excellent analytics plugin but I don't think thats possible at the moment. Any help is much appreciated. Cheers

    | CraigAddyman
    0
  • Avelient


    Looking to hire a Google Analytics expert for a project.  Dealing with trying to track traffic across multiple domains and then work with the Ecommerce options. Contact Jeff Logan @ Avelient with costs and time frame for work. [personal information removed by editors. please contact via private message system to exchange information]

    | Avelient
    0
  • CathalOMaoilfhinn


    3 months ago a client of mine re-launched theoir web site (after having a lot of work done on it). Since then, many of the SEO indications are good - more non-paid keywords sending search visits, more organic visits overall, more URLs receiving entrances via search, etc. The issue is that their bounce rate has been increasing pretty much EVERY week since. Has anyone seen a similar issue and what could a potential solution be for this? Thanks everyone!

    | CathalOMaoilfhinn
    0
  • damon1212


    Just when I think I'm starting to get it . . . info comes in that blows my mind. I'm using several tools at SeoMoz and others trying to keep track of my link building success, which has been largely me registering at related industries bulletin boards and forums and posting as well as making sure we are listed properly in any and all sites listing companies in our industry etc. I have to say I was a little frustrated with the results.  I had seen SOME increase in the back links, but almost no move in the number of linking domains. NOW I just logged into googles webmaster tools . . . and their data says I have more than DOUBLE the number of linking domains as any other sites are suggesting. What's going on here?  I can understand slight discrepancies due to when they crawl the data etc . .. but 22 linking domains compared to 9-10 from everyone else?  What the heck?

    | damon1212
    0
  • lavidge


    We have been playing catch up and noticed that in between March and April, one of our sites has seen a drastic decrease in traffic for "city + keyword". All of the other keywords are doing very well. The site has a page for each location. The traffic for these pages dropped by 33% between March and April. And page 1 rankings dropped by 30% as well. No drastic updates were made during this time. The traffic and rankings have not came back. This isn't for every location either. It seems very random as far as the drop in rankings. Did anything happen with local rankings at this time? Did anyone else see this? This is only affecting the Google traffic. Let me know your thoughts.

    | lavidge
    0
  • AndyMacLean


    Hi, Ive been evaluating conversion rates by operating system and by browser for a client. Ive picked up significant and somewhat disturbing trends. As you'd expect the bulk of traffic is coming from a Windows/Internet Explorer combination. This is unfortunately one of the worst combinations (Windows/Firefox & Windows/Safari did worse. Chrome/Windows was significantly the best combination with Windows). Windows also performs much worse than Mac. E.g. Windows/Firefox performs worse than Mac/Firefox. Overall conversion rate for Mac is 7.07% compared to 5.69% Windows. This is based on hundreds of thousands of visits and equates to tens of thousands of dollars difference in revenue. Generally later versions of browsers perform better on both main operating systems e.g IE 9.0 converts at 6.33% compared to 8.0 at 5.80% on Windows and Firefox 4.01 on the Mac converts at 7.57% compared to 3.6.16 at 6.54% (although this dataset is smaller than Windows/IE). Page load speeds (recorded in the clients analytics) are significantly faster on Mac than Windows (as expected really). Being Windows/IE and specifically Windows IE8 represents the bulk of traffic should we be addressing this? Will any optimisation negatively affect better performing Mac/Browser combinations? Understanding that Mac users equate to 'better' converting visitors - what else could be done there? Anyone have thoughts or experience on optimising pages for improved conversion rates via IE and Windows? Thanks in advance, Andy

    | AndyMacLean
    0
  • hectorpn


    Hi SEO gurus! All my websites in GWT show the website in question at the top of the "Links to your site", in the form of: Domains Total links my-site.com 1,000 third-party-1.com 500 third-party-2.com 300 third-party-3.com 200 etc.com 100 However, I have a specific account that suddenly (a few weeks back) disappeared its own link count: Domains Total links third-party-1.com 500 third-party-2.com 300 third-party-3.com 200 etc.com 100 Has this happened to any of you? Any ideas how to solve it? The website is www.gmvbodybuilding.com which you can see has plenty of properly formed links.

    | hectorpn
    0
  • JSOC


    Removal of an old getclicky code (and installation of new tracking code) from my site after some changes resolved inaccuracies in my page view/bounce rate information. Prior to adding the correct getclicky code, getclicky was showing 95% plus bounce rate on my site. I knew this was wrong because GA showed around 40%. Ironically, now that my getclicky account is working (showing a 30% bounce rate), GA bounce rate is steadily climbing. Is it best to just stick with one analytics account so that the codes don't conflict? Is it possible to have two accurate analytics accounts at the same time?

    | JSOC
    0
  • ashish211


    Hi, I want to see the history reports for my ranking. For example I can how my website traffic changed in past few months using Google Analytics but I am not able to monitor the performance of my keywords on seomoz. Is there any way to do it?

    | ashish211
    0
  • APICDA


    OK,  not quite sure how this is happening, but......... I am having referral traffic from online game  sites.   Actually quite a bit of it and it seems to be raising my bounce rate a bit.  B Suggestions anyone? Below is my website: http://www.allianceconcretepumps.com Thank You!!

    | APICDA
    0

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