Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst we’re not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Google Analytics and Bounce Rates Query - Should I block access from foreign countries ?
-
Hi ,
When I look at my google analytics for my UK Website, I can see alot of visits come from outside the UK , i.e Brazil and USA. Both of which give me almost 100% bounce rates from people visiting from there.
I am wondering, if google looks at bounce rates with regards to ranking factors and should I therefore block access to my site from visitors outside the UK ?... Would this help increase my rankings ?
Given that we only serve uk customers, I cant see any benefit of allowing non uk customers the ability to see the site .
what does people think ?
thanks
pete
-
Yes it is (clear), and I'll review the Analytics documentation for more details. Really appreciate you taking the time to reply. ~Mike
-
Hi Mike,
I don't have access to a of pc now. From my memory you first create a filter, and then aply the filter to a new view. You should always keep one view in original state without any filters. Hope this is clear. Hope it is sufficiently clear.
rgds
Dirk
-
Thanks Dirk. That answered the issue I was uncertain about, which was whether blocking visitors from Analytics reports truly prevents them from hitting the site (even an error page), and apparently it doesn't so your answer makes perfect sense.
One more question: Does an Analytics filter automatically apply to all Analytics views/reports for that domain/site, or does a filter have to be assigned to the views I want it to affect (in this case, all of them)?
Thanks for the quick response!
Mike -
Hi Michael
The first thing you should do is to define the geography you are targeting in webmaster tools (If you have a generic tld).
if you would block visitors from Brazil on your site the bounce rate measured by analytics will go down. However, Google is not using your analytics data to measure the bounce rate (at least that is what they claim). As al these people get an error message when they try to visit your site,the real bounce-rate will increase rather than go down, making the situation even worse, you just would not be aware of it.
What you could do is set a custom filter in analytics, showing only the traffic from your target country and apply this filter to a new view. This gives you better insights on the behavior of your target audience.
rgds
Dirk
-
I've got a similar problem with nearly 50% of the traffic to many of my client's sites coming from Brazil. My clients are and will only ever be local, small town operations, so my questions are:
1. Why it's not a good idea to block those visits that are irrelevant to the traffic we want to measure.
2. Bounce rate is considered to play at least some role in the ranking algorithm, or at least I always thought so. If over 50% of my traffic is bouncing because it's bot driven, spam related, etc, shouldn't I be worried about the adverse affect on my bounce rate?Just trying to understand the rules to this game.
Thanks!
Mike -
Many thanks All
Peter
-
I'd like to add to the answers above.
First, I agree - do not block foreign visitors. There are many reasons for this, do not worry about their bounce rates.
Second, and the part I'm adding, is I suggest setting up a Filtered View in your Google Analytics that only tracks your target demographic, in your situation the UK visitors.
This Filtered View will allow you to see more accurate metrics for the people you're targeting and allow you to do a better analysis of your web analytics. Make sure to add that filtered view and not overwrite your unfiltered view, so if you ever do expand into the other geographic locations you can dig into their performance analytics as well.
-
Hi Pete,
Please don't block access to foreigners. You can set the geo-target in Google webmaster tools account, if you have not already done so. It is completely normal with country-specific websites getting traffic from all over the World. A small or probably 1 in a thousand foreign visits might come from UK people traveling abroad. So to conclude, its my honest opinion not to block access to foreigners even the bounce rates might be alarming. Its common and natural and search engine like Google know about this pretty well and there won't be any issue to your website from their end.
Best regards,
Devanur Rafi
-
Blocking access to your site for foreign visitors won't change anything for your "real" bounce rate. The measured bounce rate will decrease in Analytics, but these visitors will still bounce when they get to your website.
If you're using a generic domain extension - you can indicate in Webmastertools that you are targeting the local UK market (if you use a .uk extension this is automatically the case).
I wouldn't worry too much about this bounce rate - as long as the bounce rate (and time/visit - time on page) for your UK visitors is ok
rgds
Dirk
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 suddenly stopped tracking all my landing pages
Hey guys. I love the new update of GA. Looks so clean. So, of course, I was excited to see how my landing pages were doing. I went to behavior, all content, all pages. And I noticed it's only showing me 19 pages out of the 93 I have indexed. And none of the top ones at all! Can't find them anywhere in GA! Anyone seen this before? Thank you so much
Reporting & Analytics | | Meier0 -
Google Analytics Real Time Not Working! :(
Hello Everyone, Today, the real time feature in my google analytics stopped working. I am able to see that traffic is visiting my site, but not in real time. The real time count is usually at 0. But, there are some instances where real time will come back online, but there will be only 1 unique visitor. At any given time, our website usually has 20 visitors or so..Has anyone encountered this issue? Where should i start looking for fixes? What are the possible problems? Thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | KarlMarxTheBear0 -
How does switching to HTTPS effect Google Analytics?
We are looking at making our site HTTPS. We have been using the same Google Analytics account for years and I like having the historical data. All of our pages will be the same, we are just going to redirect from the http to https. Does anything need to be done with Google Analytics? What about other addons such as Optimizely, Crazy Egg, or Share this?
Reporting & Analytics | | EcommerceSite0 -
Why is Google Analytics showing index.php after every page URL?
Hi, My client's site has GA tracking code gathering correct data on the site, but the pages are listed in GA as having /index.php at the end of every URL, although this does not appear when you visit the site pages. Even if there is a redirect happening for site visitors, shouldn't GA be showing the pages as their redirect destination, i.e. the URL that visitors actually see? Could this discrepancy be adversely affecting my search performance? Example page: http://freshstarttax.com/innocent-spouse/ shows up in GA as http://freshstarttax.com/innocent-spouse/index.php thanks
Reporting & Analytics | | JMagary0 -
Google Analytics and DNS change
Our new alumni application is going be tested at domain uva.imodules.com . We are going to collect traffic data with a Google analytics account number UA-884652-XX. So going to uva.imodules.com/myPage.html would send its data to Google Analytics with that account number. Then when it is ready for production we are going to just change the domain name of the application and switch the DNS over to dardencommunity.darden.virginia.edu . So going to dardencommunity.darden.virginia.edu /myPage.html would send its data to Google Analtics with that SAME account number. Aside from having the testing domain data in the same profile are there any other issues/problems we may run into?
Reporting & Analytics | | Darden0 -
No Social Sources in Google Analytics - what am I doing wrong?
Hello Everyone, I'm having a strange issue: I DO NOT have in my Google Analytics the "Social" tab under the Traffic Sources category. Look at the first image of this post: http://marketingland.com/google-analytics-social-reports-8138 How do you "get" that to show? Hope somebody has this issue and can help, Thanks a lot, Alex
Reporting & Analytics | | pwpaneuro0 -
Setting Up Google Analytic with Sub Folder Sites
What is the best way of setting up Google Analytic for a website that has many sub folders? The main site is example.com and it has 40 sub folder sites like example.com/uk example.com/France etc etc Would it be advised to track a single domain in Google Analytic then create filters for the sub folder sites. Filters > Include traffic from > Sub directories Also with this method is it possible to view overall incoming website stats for everything? Previous experience would be great with this thanks 🙂
Reporting & Analytics | | daracreative0 -
Why does Google Analytics think PPC traffic is organic?
I have a bastard of a problem... Google Analytics is incorrectly tracking PPC traffic as SEO which is screwing up all my reporting . I don't care for rankings, I care for actual SEO traffic and I can't be sure that what i am seeing is correct which is driving me nuts. Any ideas?
Reporting & Analytics | | Red_Mud_Rookie1