Wordpress + Google Analytics = Pulling My Hair Out
-
Hey Mozzers,
Quick question for you-
I have analytics set-up for a personal site I run and I know, verifiably it's receiving traffic, however, whenever I access my Google Analytics dashboard, it says I've had zero visits.
Interestingly, today I had a colleague check the site from a foreign country and I could see the page views (within 15 minutes), however, I could not get any information about the site viewer.
I have verified that the Analytics profile is 'receiving data' (which it is) and my Google Webmaster Tools is not reporting any issues?
Finally, I went ahead and updated my profile so that it is pulling from 'www.mydomain.com' instead of 'mydomain.com', I don't know if that'll make any difference, but likewise, I didn't want to go and create the 'little kid in the elevator' analogy, where I'm just pressing a bunch of buttons just because they're there.
So the only changes I've made thus far were deactivating Yoast's SEO plug-in and manually placing the GA code in the header and updating the 'Website's URL' in the profile settings tab of GA from 'mydomain.com' to 'www.mydomain.com'.
With that, I am stumped and praying another one of the esteemed Mozzers out there may be able to help me resolve this. Any thoughts?
-
You'll definitely want to have the non-www version 301 redirecting to the www version, otherwise you're inviting ranking issues with the search engines.
Done correctly, you shouldn't encounter any 404s as a result, and there's nothing needed to do as far as "re-writes to update all the site pages URLs". That's precisely what the 301 redirect is designed to handle.
That said, if you have created links on your own website that point to the non-www version (in navigation or in post content for example) it would be a good idea to change them to what's called the Fully Qualified Domain Name or FQN. 301 redirects are suspected not to pass absolutely all their link juice through, so it's best to link directly to what you've decided will be the FQN for your site - i.e. the www.yoursite.com version.
Does the traffic seem to be flowing into Analytics now as expected?
Paul
-
Paul,
The non-www version was not 301 redirected, however, when I updated the 'default URL' in the property settings from 'mydomain.com' to 'www.mydomain.com' I started seeing traffic stats again for that profile.
I previously re-wrote the .htaccess file to redirect accordingly, however, was having problems finding pages on my site after I implemented the changes.
Even though I can see the traffic stats now, do you think I should still try and implement the redirect? Likewise, would implementing the 301 create navigation problems (i.e. 404s, pages not being found) if I don't implement some sort of dynamic URL re-writes to update all the site pages URLs?
-
Another thought - if you had set the domain's URL as website.com, but in fact nearly all traffic was going to www.website.com and you didn't have a 301 redirect in place to point the non-www version to the www version, that could cause the data issue as well, I think.
Was the non-www version 301 redirected to the www version?
Paul
-
Have you checked to see if you have any filters or custom segments running in the Analytics profile? This really sounds like a filter is distorting/blocking the data.
Try creating a clean profile of the website in the same account and see if it records data.
Also, when checking, keep in mind the GA is typically 24 hrs behind when reporting data (except for the Real Time section of course)
Paul
-
Oleg,
Thanks for getting back to me, I am using the asynchronous code and changing the date range, but it didn't help. Nevertheless, thank you for your suggestion!
-
Make sure you are using the asynchronous analytics code. Once you've added it to the site, view the source and make sure it appears exactly as you input it. Make sure you select today's date in the analytics range (default is yesterday).
-
What do you mean by 'putting the code on'? I would be happy to send you an example, just tell me what you'd like me to include in that?
-
hmm, pretty strange - you can always test it by putting the code on, and then viewing it in real time - you should see visits happening, especially if you open the site in a different browser.
You can send through an example and I'll be happy to take a look.
Got a burning SEO question?
Subscribe to Moz Pro to gain full access to Q&A, answer questions, and ask your own.
Browse Questions
Explore more categories
-
Moz Tools
Chat with the community about the Moz tools.
-
SEO Tactics
Discuss the SEO process with fellow marketers
-
Community
Discuss industry events, jobs, and news!
-
Digital Marketing
Chat about tactics outside of SEO
-
Research & Trends
Dive into research and trends in the search industry.
-
Support
Connect on product support and feature requests.
Related Questions
-
More 'New users' than 'Users' in Google Analytics
Hey Mozzers, I'm seeing more 'New users' than 'Users' in Google Analytics (see screenshot). This is over a 3 year time period. Any idea why new users would be greater than users? Thanks! 6lYmU0j
Reporting & Analytics | | RWesley0 -
Email traffic tracking in Google Analytics
Hello! I have a question about how to assure email traffic is properly tracked in GA > Acquisition > All Traffic > Channels. **First, some background... ** Our company (Wisconsin's largest group dental practice) is about to revamp the way we try to re-capture patients who don't have a future appointment set with us. Part of that process will include emails. Those emails will point back to our website to request an appointment. Now to the question... Is there anything special we should do to assure that links coming to the website and the resulting appointment request goal conversions track appropriately and appear under "Email" in the Default Channel Group of Analytics > Acquisition > All Traffic > Channels area of GA? For example, should we use Campaign URL Builder to establish UTM links? Thanks in advance for any feedback. Erik
Reporting & Analytics | | SmileMoreSEO0 -
Some questions on how to set up a multi-visit advanced segment in Google Analytics
Hi I would like some assistance / clarification on how to set up a user segment so that it can track user behavior over multiple visits. Basically I have a campaign set up and want to see conversions - even if they hit the site and then convert later on another visit. I've read that you can do this (over up to 30 days). So I start off by filtering TRAFFIC SOURCE - easy enough. But then I have to add under "advanced" correct? But then when I set the next filter to the GOAL I want, I only get "by session" and "by hit" as options. The blog post I read made it sound like only "by user" would then really do multi visits. Is "by user" only an e-commerce tracking option? (which I don't have set up) Is there another way/path to get the info I need? Thank you!
Reporting & Analytics | | yandl0 -
Best top 5 actionable insights from Google Analytics
Buongiorno from 14 degrees C cloudy wetherby UK 🙂 With a whole gamut of books out there are written around the topic of "Actionable Web analytics" where you have to wade through chapters of how to suck eggs and how to get analytics part of your business culture (whatever! most clients who look after their websites are entry level Marketing Execs who pay the digital agencies to do the thinking for them) I'd like to cut to the chase and list out say a top 5 of actionable insights a client would actually give the time of day for so heres my top five, whats yours? 1. Landing page bounce - showing them the £5k landing page designed with no conversion thinking is turning off customers
Reporting & Analytics | | Nightwing
2. Synching up PPC campaigns to analytics and showing them how much money they are waisting
3. Goal funnels - Showing them there 20 step shopping conversion funnel gets abandoned at step 3
4. Non brand keyword traffic (although a stack of this gets blocked by "not provided" Big groan...)
5. Event tracking on there 10 page carousel anner showing them no one clicks on banners 2 - 10 So under the strict label of "Actionable data only" from Google analytics whats your best insights you share with clients in the hope that they may actually give data reports the time of day! Grazie tanto,
David1 -
Mobile Site on Google Analytics
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
Reporting & Analytics | | Ideas-Money-Art0 -
How do I keep the SEOmoz bot from showing up in my Google Analytics?
I noticed today that we had a huge spike in visits on December 9th of this month. We are talking like 13,000 more visits. The network the visits were from was psinet inc. Any suggestions on how to keep these bots from registering in my Google Analytics? Is there an ip address I can exclude?
Reporting & Analytics | | Hosmercars0 -
Google Analytics traffic hijacking?
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?
Reporting & Analytics | | khemistry0 -
Advanced segements Google Analytics
Hi guys, I was to hasty last time marking the given question as answered. So i would like to ask another question on the subject. My original question was how to get a pdf report of 10 specific keywords with information about visits,pages per view. avg, visit time, new visitors and bounce rate. The answer was to create an advanced segment with "or operators" and adding all keywords on an exact match basis. I did this but it still gives me a list of more then 500 keywords in traffic sources organic view. Next to that i get different visitor numbers for some keywords where it says 40 at the normal segments (all visits) but gives me 0 when i turn on the advanced segment. I've been clicking and changing things for a long time until i got almost dizzy. Could someone plz help?
Reporting & Analytics | | 5MMedia0