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
-
Increase of direct traffic
Hi everyone, We have a weird issue in our Google Analytics account. We have enormous amount of direct traffic, but not to our homepage, but to blogs that are published and posted to facebook. e.g. yesterday we did a post and it received 3.500 visits of which 2.900 were direct.
Reporting & Analytics | | Loui-60570
I'm unable to figure out how this is possible. 90% of the direct traffic comes from mobile phones Anyone has an idea?0 -
Improved keyword ranking but less traffic
Hello fellow mozzers! My collegue and I are a bit puzzled in regards to our recent website statistics. In november 2013, we upgraded the technological platform of our website to be fully HTML5 coded, and implemented the schema.org Products scheme to systematically tag all our products on the site. To prevent too much loss of visitors, we created a 301-redirect table from almost all our old URL's to the specific new ones, as we implemented a new URL structure as well. The first few months were bumpy as expected, making a huge drop in rankings before rising up again. Our keyword rankings are better then ever (60% of the keywords in top 3, average competition, 25% more on first SERP) but our number of visits dropped by about 10%. Our bounce rate went down from 20% to 14%, our returning visits are stable, but our new visitors stats dropped by 25% as well. This comparison was made between equal periods in the current year and last year, using organic data stats. (new technical platform vs. the old one) What could be the reason that our number of visits dropped 10% while our keyword ranking is better then ever? We don't have any manual penalties in GWT and can't understand why visits would drop so much while ranking improved. May it be so easy that there's just less search volume on our ranked content or does anyone have other ideas? Thank you all in advance!
Reporting & Analytics | | EconostoNL0 -
Google analytics is not tracking well
Hey, There is something not working in our GA account, its shows too many visits per day, when look where this traffic comes from, the majority comes from (not set). Please find attached. Really appreciate help! Thank you! BvmAKtO
Reporting & Analytics | | Comunicare0 -
Google Analytics Not Working
I added the code before tag but still google not showing it is installed. Status: Tracking Not Installed Last checked: Mar 15, 2013 10:38:10 PM PDT Can someone check my domain - www.plugnbuy.com
Reporting & Analytics | | chandubaba0 -
Google Analytics: Multi channel funnel
Hi 🙂 I have a little problem. In Multi-channel Funnel Overview I see 50 conversions from Paid Search (screenshot 1). But when I click on Assisted Conversion and then choose Paid Search, I see 31 Assisted Conversions and 32 Last Interaction Conversion. (screenshot 2) So my question is - why the number of converstions in overview (50) is different than number in Assisted Conversions (assisted or last interaction conversion, or both together)? Probably, the answer is so simply, but I can found out it! 🙂 thanks a lot. X6UihL7.png lCNsw4T.png
Reporting & Analytics | | visibilitysk0 -
Strange traffic - panda, penguin? Screenshots attached.
Hi, I'm unsure if I've been hit by penguin/panda. I've attached screenshots below. The first one is April 1st to today. The second is all of April and the 3rd is 1st June to today. The site was offline at the beginning of July which explains no traffic. My traffic took a dip though on April 6th which as I understand it wasn't a panda/penguin roll out? I then got hardly any traffic for May to mid June. Then the site was offline due to a server problem but when it came back on traffic was the highest it has ever been. Today however I am getting zero search engine traffic? I can't figure out what's going on. Can anyone shed any light on the issue? DTJXE DTJXE Dpj21 qHTpj
Reporting & Analytics | | SamCUK0 -
Set up Google Analytics by product category
Does anyone know if it's possible to set up Google Analytics data by product category? We sell roughly twenty product categories on our ecommerce site. We can look at our analytics performance for the site overall and drill down to specific pages, but what we really want to see is our performance by product category. Our product categories can include up to 5000 products. Any pointers on how to do this?
Reporting & Analytics | | ironpac0 -
Analytics/Google Keyword comparison
Hi I'm trying to establish a methodology to best show the gap between potential and realised organic keyword traffic. To obtain potential keyword traffic I'm using the Google Adwords keyword tool to derive local monthly search volumes for exact keyword matches. However, I'm confused as to which is the best way of getting a comparable metric from Google Analytics (GA). I was using custom reports and the 'organic searches' metric. However, this provides different values to a standard report selecting non-paid search in the default advanced segments. What is the best report/metric in GA to use for both organic and paid search volumes that would be comparable to the Google Adwords keyword tool. Also, I'm having problems getting my kids to eat their greens, any advice! 😉 Thanks Neil
Reporting & Analytics | | mccormackmorrison0