Question re Google Analytics and its more accurate alternatives
-
Hi guys
There are two main issues we have with Google Analytics, and I'd really appreciate if anyone has the time to give an answer to that.
-
We completely miss organic traffic data before 7/22/2013 although our account is active since 2005. Any thoughts on that? Is it the not provided move that swiped out all data or something else?
-
Even for the data we do have there is lots of inaccuracies, and we are thinking on switching or at least adding a new analytics software, any recommendations? (FYI, it turns out we do not keep access logs on the server for more than 2 months, and we might fix that for future references, but now we are looking for external solution).
Any help will be much appreciated
Thanks
Lily
-
-
July 25, 2013 is when Analytics started using "Channels" as a dimension, so that is why it appears that there is no data before that--it doesn't mean there actually isn't any organic data.
As has already been mentioned, you can use a segment to see organic traffic before then--or you can choose "medium" as your primary dimension and select organic from there.
-
The major downside to Google Analytics is that it relies solely on Javascript. In other words, your clients' browsers have to load the JS, parse it and send the appropriate data back to Analytics. While this works for most visitors, it certainly doesn't work for all.
Log parsing is always the best solution because your server, by definition, gets all the traffic and can tell you with 100% accuracy your actual traffic. Most of the log parsers don't require you to keep your logs. Instead, they parse the logs and store relevant data in a database. The downside here is that you will have to have direct access to your server logs, which not all people have.
Some open source solutions include GoAccess and AWStats. There's also Cloudflare, which is more of a proxy but it can also feed you true numbers (although with less granular data, much like GA). There are numerous paid solutions as well.
-
Hi Lily,
For question 1 are you trying to see keyword related data or just organic traffic levels in general? If the latter you can use a segment to view organic traffic only. This would allow you to see organic traffic levels prior to 2013.
To do this click add segment located just below the top of the page (screenshot attached) and select "Organic Traffic" (second screenshot).
Give me a shout if you have anymore questions on this
Tim
109a77b3dc7befd3454e6103f8102277 ecaec5f322faefac26ea147aa3849dc9
-
Hi Lily,
1> You can still go to Acquisition >>Campaigns >> Organic Keywords to see historical data.***
For referral & direct traffic please check below URL once may be helpful for you.
============================
2>You can try Kissmetrics. (https://www.kissmetrics.com/)
Thanks
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
-
How to set and understand behavior flow in google analytic?
Hello Experts, How to set and understand behavior flow in google analytic? I have attached screenshot of my behavior flow it is showing not set. So how to set? Thanks! MAQnG SQ7QM
Reporting & Analytics | | micey1230 -
Cross domain tracking Google Analytics
Hi there, Got a question on cross domain tracking: We have a couple of TLD's to serve localized content to our visitors, next to our main .com TLD where our app is running as well in a subdomain. Situation is this: Local sites:
Reporting & Analytics | | jorisbrabants
marketingsite.be
marketingsite.com.br
marketingsite.fr Main site: marketingsite.com
app.marketingsite.com Conversion gets triggered when somebody ends up in app.marketingsite.com/firstuse for example. People can sign up at the local site filling in their email but they end up in app.marketingsite.com/firstuse Reading this article on cross domain tracking I'm getting a bit confused on the setup of the tracking code itself. The sample code provided shows these two lines: ga('require', 'linker'); ga('linker:autoLink', ['maindomain.com','targetdomain.com']); Now the question 🙂 Is it correct when I think that maindomain should be replaced with our local TLD's on every one of those, and that targetdomain is where the conversion happens? In this case the .com site?0 -
No-indexed pages are still showing up as landing pages in Google Analytics
Hello, My website is a local job board. I de-indexed all of the job listing pages on my site (anything that starts with http://www.localwisejobs.com/job/). When I search site:localwisejobs.com/job/, nothing shows up. So I think that means the pages are not being indexed. When I look in Google Analytics at Acquisition > Search Engine Optimization > Landing Pages, none of the job listing pages show up. But when I look at Acquisition > Channels > Organic and then click Landing Page as the primary dimension, the /job pages show up in there. Why am I seeing this discrepency in Organic Landing pages? And why would the /job pages be showing up as landing pages even though they aren't indexed?
Reporting & Analytics | | mztobias0 -
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 -
How Can I Record .zip Traffic in Google Analytics
The company I am with shows traffic coming in to .zip files in Google Analytics. The traffic being recorded stopped a while back, but I know people are still downloading/visiting these .zip ULRs. I'm not sure how they were recording/tracking the .zip URLs (in Analytics) before, but I'd like to track them once again. Does anyone know how to do this? Thanks
Reporting & Analytics | | poolguy0 -
Google Analytics - multiple counters
Hey there Mozzers! One of our customers wants to seperate one Google Analytics account into multiple accounts. The website is divided in three parts: Main: www.website.nl Sub1: www.website.nl/sub1 Sub2: http://www.website.nl/sub2 And they would like 4 different reports under one account. R1: Total count R2: Website.nl (without Sub 1 & Sub2) R3: Sub1 R4: Sub2 I know multiple counters will get in conflict with each other, so I have to implement some filters. E.g: We can configure a filter for R3 on "astmakids" in URL. My question is: is there a safe way to implement multiple Analytics filters on one website? And how will R3 see visitors that come from the root domain astmafonds.nl? Are they referrals? Thanks a lot in advance!! Partouter
Reporting & Analytics | | Partouter0 -
How to combine several subdomain in google Analytics
Good afternoon. I have a question.
Reporting & Analytics | | meteorr
I have a main site site.com + many subdomains example1.site.com, example2.site.com, example3.site.com, example4.site.com .... I need to combine google Analytics reports into one. Information from: example2.site.com, example3.site.com
showed in example1.site.com Yk64j0 -
New Google Analytics Site Speed tool and excel
Hello, I was wondering if there is a good tool or method to pull the new Google Analytics Site Speed data into excel and use this document to track site speeds on a weekly basis for multiple clients? Any good articles or how-to's would be awesome!
Reporting & Analytics | | Hakkasan0