Universal Analytics - is it awarding traffic incorrectly ?
-
A few days ago deployed a new site. A funny thing happened within one day. Google Analytics commenced reporting Organic traffic as lifting by 25%. At the same time Google Analytics commenced reporting that direct traffic dropped by 25%. All other traffic sources remained at the same level. This is all being reported through GA Universal. Has anyone experienced this before? Any advice is appreciated.
Also noted that with Google Webmaster is reporting, since the day of the new site deployment, a 40% drop in impressions and click. Reported referrals on this deployment day also went through the roof.
All of the Google tools I am depending on are not supporting my discovery of a solution to this. If anyone has been through this on universal analytics or traditional analytics please help! Offering lots of good karma points in return.
Cheers.
-
Hi, has this issue been resolved? We'd love an update, thanks!
Christy
-
Well pretty sure that's your problem as HTTPS sites to HTTP will drop the referrer and will make sure it's direct traffic.
-
Hi Martijn, Yes - we did a migration to full HTTPS on the same day from HTTP. I believe this would have caused the shift in reassigning organic & direct traffic.
-
Are you on a HTTPS server?
-
Thanks for the response Andy.
I have just messaged you the site link. So look forward to discussing and picking your brain on this.
Cheers
-
While I do use GA, I am a skeptic and believe that the software does favour Organic and Paid traffic, to make you think you are more reliant on Google than you probably are.
But on the other hand, Groupon did a test and found 60% of its direct traffic was actually organic (http://searchengineland.com/60-direct-traffic-actually-seo-195415), but the problem is its all upto the browser passing the information back to which ever solution you are using to track traffic.
If you want to share your web url (either on here or in a private message) I will take a look for you and make sure when you switched you didn't make a minor error which is causing traffic to drop.
Which day did you see the movement, as earlier this week there was a lot of movement in the SERPs, Google hasn't confirmed an update, but its believed there was on (so it could just be related to this, rather than your implementation of UA).
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
-
Google Analytics Automated Reporting
HI all, I tend to do a big reporting powerpoint deck using screenshots from google analytics and tables I create year end and mid year. It's like an 80 page report for the 10 webisite swe have and then I go ahead and make annotations as I see from the data. That being said this can take a lot of time, up to a 40 hours of time to pull it all together or more which is challenging when you have daily meetings. Anyhow, I've looked into automating and tried a couple things: 1. Tableau- but it keeps crashing and seems tedious 2. Dashlane and supergrabber- seem a bit tedious to set up too. Anyone have ideas on how to better shar ereporting in the organization in this type of format for a website (websites)? Organic, paid, traffic, etc. Laura
Reporting & Analytics | | lauramrobinson322 -
Traffic Drop Observations: Google UI, Mobilegeddon
Our traffic has dropped 25% in the last 3 weeks while maintaining our keyword rankings. At first, we thought it was due to the simultaneous change in Google UI where they removed the separators between ads and organic results. However, now, we have also noticed that our user devices have gone from ~ 50% desktop/50% mobile to 20% desktop/80% mobile. Just food for thought ...
Reporting & Analytics | | Humanovation0 -
All goal conversion in Google analytics showing under referral
Hi All, I have switched my website from http to https After switching from http to https all goal conversions in Google analytics showing under referral.I have also updated the GA code for https. Please help me out to fix the issue. Thanks
Reporting & Analytics | | Alick3000 -
Google Analytics - Sessions vs Views?
In Google Analytics under Audience Overview I want to visit total visits during any given period of time but instead it shows me sessions. Am I missing something? How do I switch from sessions to page visits?
Reporting & Analytics | | gohawks77902 -
Switching Google Analytics from Urchin to GA
I want to finally make the switch from Urchin to GA in Analytics, but the Google support page is no longer working (I realize I'm late to this so they likely took it down/moved it to where I can't find it). I've been searching on Google but can't find a straightforward guide to changing that won't disrupt my data. Anyone have a link to a working guide, or can you provide some guidance?
Reporting & Analytics | | Axios_Systems0 -
Tracking analytics on several domains
Hello, I am looking for some advice. I am working with a real estate client. They have a main website, and then several separate agent websites. The agent sites share some content with the main site, as well as having some unique content. My question is what is the best way to track visitors? Should I have separate Google Analytics accounts for each site, or should I use one account and separate profiles?
Reporting & Analytics | | ukao0 -
Finding organic keywords driving traffic
Is there any way to know which organic keywords are driving traffic to my landing pages in Google analytics ?
Reporting & Analytics | | seoug_20050 -
Sudden Drop in Direct Traffic
We recently had a some changes to our site, adding new sub categories, moving products around, etc... We implemented the changes on Thursday of last week and had a normal day around 800+ visitors. The very next day our # of visitors dropped in half to around 400+ and has stayed that way all weekend. I thought it might be that some links may have changed but I checked all of the links and they are the same as before with the exception of new pages. I checked to make sure that the google analytics code was still in the code and it is. I read that it could be DNS propagation timing issue but it's been 3 days and nothing's changed. I'm fairly certain that we are not being penalized or pandalized by google as our referrals and organic search results have not changed only the amount of direct traffic. Anyone have any ideas on what to look at or what to do?
Reporting & Analytics | | LizIslCo0