How to interpret search "clicks" in GA?
-
I am trying to make some sense of the data in the "Landing Pages" report under "Search Engine Optimization" in GA versus the data under the "Landing Pages" report in "Behavior | Site Content".
For example, the SEO report says my page http://www.asiantraveltips.com/blog/bangkok-skytrain-bts-mrt-lines/ received 22,000 search impressions in the past 30 days and 900 "clicks" (12.42%). What are these "clicks" when the Content "Landing Pages" report says the same page only got 382 "sessions" in the same period???
What are these "clicks" if not clicks on the search results link that should be reflected in landing page sessions on the corresponding page?
-
Just a quick PS here Charles, this is a new segment I've added to my site called "image traffic" that looks at the traffic I receive from Google Search (inspired by your answer).
ef28008b890400b0d9938303c9df3050 d13240144d12a100dd3ff1e8868227db
-
Yes Matt, he did. I only just saw this response - I must have missed the email notification. Thank you Charles for all the work you put into this and for finding the answer. I really appreciate it. Love learning something new.
-
Hi there Customer.Insight.Team!
Did Charles answer your question?
-
Ok, my friend. I have an answer for you
I have attached three screenshots. So, #1 - the problem is that under Acquisition->SEO->Landing pages amount of clicks include not only Google Web Search, but also Google Image Search. So, you can see that you got 900 clicks on image search results from the page of skytrain lines and only 90 from web results. Google doesn't track traffic through image search. (Good post with good sources on this matter)
#2 - I checked google organic traffic for your website - it's 2268 sessions.
#3 - I filtered out images search from reporting results - I got 1900 clicks.
Here you go. Number match (at least these are normal, expected numbers). Clicks are less than sessions, because sessions include cached, repetative etc results.
Problem Solved
-
OK, I think these are the screens you want to see, but I also gave you access to my GA so you could take a look directly.
7d50a1cd02167a908c717ab7c2bd2b2c efd3fb53f6a803f49d5f7bccfe065856 d71ea821b30d58d6ca0e7c9ea72b7c7d
-
UPDATE: I might have an idea why it's happening:
All data, displayed under Acquisition->SEO->Landing Pages is taken from connected Google Webmaster Tools (or they call it now Search Console). So, if you have several properties from GMT connected to the same Google analytics account, you gonna be getting THE SUM of data from all GMT accounts.
If I look at my GA and GMT accounts now, the data (clicks and impressions) I see is matching with less than 1% margin. So, if that's not happening in your case, you might have several GMT accounts connected!(?)
Attach the screenshot of GMT too, make sure to check impressions and view by page url (radio button things).
-
Ok, my friend. Something reeeeally weird going on. My first guess - improper tagging. And this is why I think so:
I see that in all traffic by channels there were 2810 sessions for organic search. At the same time under SEO->Landing pages the number states 7549 clicks. That's like 2.5 times difference!
Please, do this: do the same screenshots as above, but with time period ending on August 18 (so those two last days, which are not included under SEO don't dilute data). Also, when you are taking screeshot of Behaviour->Site content->Landing Pages, add secondary dimension Source, so we see actual number of sessions coming from google.
If you want, you can give me restricted access to your google analytics, so I can look at it directly: dmitrii@hyperlinksmedia.com
-
Not using Adwords or segments/filters on this account. Here are the screen shots you asked for. Don't worry about the drop off in traffic, that's just a link promo ending.
34127269ea9643fa1561a37f614a01e2 9f5c97d53a4620c6a9cece8594a65f10 af8df768ea256db65bd05131b0f37a75
-
Hi there.
This is very interesting. I manage about 30 different accounts and I don't see mismatches in any of them. Now, my only thoughts on this matter are: under "Search Engine Optimization" no data is available from most recent two days, at the same time it shows data only for top 1000 daily landing pages. Also you can't use segments in this report, so, maybe your data under "Behavior" is being automatically filtered by segment?
Also keep in mind that under "Search Engine Optimization" clicks do not include traffic from adwords. So, if your website gets a lot of adwords traffic, that might be the reason.
Would you mind leaving screenshots of those three pages (Acquisition->SEO->landing pages, sorted by clicks; Behaviour->site content->landing pages;Aquisition->all traffic->channels)?
-
Is Adwords linked up?
Have you tagged the landing pages of your display campaigns using URL builder https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1033867?hl=en-GB thereafter the correct data should be translated into GA.
Hope that assists.
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
-
New GSC Search Analytics report: position mixes web and image
Dear all, I am auditing a site in Google Seach Console (GSC, formerly Google Webmaster Tools) and find the Position data in the new Search Analytics report very, very improbable. I suspect that even if you filter by "SearchType = web", the Position data does count the ranking of images in the Image search widget as a search position. Has anybody observed this as well? Here is the case: the site targets a quite broad search query in the bath room domain. I have made a number of searches with private browser sessions, different browsers, alternative IP address via a VPN, etc, and the look of the search result in the relevant geographical market is consistently the following. Three Adwords ads #1 organic result Images universal results widget #2-10 organic results The site’s first page ranks consistently around #15 of the organic results, hence on the second SERP. But it also consistently has an image in the Images universal results widget (usually #2 or #3). This is consistent with the data I have in Moz Analytics. Yet, the GSC Search Analytics report shows 2.2 as average position with the default SearchType=Web setting. I have done the search over and over, and never has a PAGE of the site ranked that high. Is there any public information how exactly the position is calculated? I mean, something more precise than the very general information on https://support.google.com/webmasters/answer/6155685?hl=en Is there any way to get the correct position/ranking? Thanks for sharing your experience!
Reporting & Analytics | | QRN0 -
Queries vs. Organic Keywords in GA
Could someone explain how the following metrics in Google Analytics are being calculated: Search Engine Optimization (Acquisition): clicks on a certain query Campaigns (Acquisition): sessions on a certain keyword GA Help states that both 'queries' and 'organic keywords' refer to the actual string a user enters in Google Search. In that cases it seems that 'clicks' on a SERP result through a given query and 'sessions' through that very same query could not be miles apart. E.g.: Clicks through query X = 170 Sessions through organic keyword X = 8 Thank you for helping me out!
Reporting & Analytics | | WeAreDigital_BE0 -
Can't identify the real source of a goal because subdomains in GA
Hello, I have one domain for my website (www.domain.com) where I receive all the new traffic and a subdomain (billing.domain.com) for the billing system. Im tracking both in Analytics. I have a goal (new order) configured in the subdomain -billing system-. But when I want to track the source / medium of the goals (new orders) in billing.domain.com, always appears my main website (www.domain.com) as the referral. Now I added in Analytics: Admin > Property > Referral Exclusion List, the www.domain.com and domain.com. Do you think that now I can track the real referrer of the goals? Or should I do a more complex tracking setup with Tag Manager ( https://support.google.com/tagmanager/answer/6106951 ) to pass the session cookies from a subdomain to another one, just to identify the real source / medium of the visitor? Thank you 🙂
Reporting & Analytics | | estebanseo0 -
Exact Match in Google Search (Not Adwords)
I was going throught the list of keywords that have sent traffic to my site over the last 7 years and cam across one "A516 grade 70" that had hundreds of variants. Now in a lot of cases search volumes were different as were SERPS. We've tested a few variants with reworked pages (70% similar to original but optimised for variant keyword) and see good SERPS and traffic results. Theres obviously some diminishing returns here for us but the interesting question is when to these variants become an exact match and when not? In some cases the variants are unique because of the spacig, periods and hyphens used. there isn't a clear correlation with exact matc though. Insight appreciated. (Sorry for spelling errors. Form doesn't play nicely with iPad)
Reporting & Analytics | | Zippy-Bungle0 -
Ga event tracking and GAC code placement
Just relaunched website and since then specific event tracking has zeroed. I copied event tracking directly from old site so it should work. Overall analytics are fine. Only variable I can think of is where google analytics code is placed. Does GAC code need to be on HTML header or at end of body specifically for event tracking to work? Example: Steripen.com/freedom/... When user clicks "REI" icon, this tracks an event that a user clicked on one of our"retailer links." Any feedback is greatly appreciated.
Reporting & Analytics | | Timmmmy0 -
Interpreting Keyword Difficulty Tool results
I have been running various reports using the Keyword Difficulty tool. The columns are color coded - are there one set of signals that are more important than others? I am trying to analylze why we are ranking where we are and where our competitors are weak enough to overcome in a short term. I cannot seem to find a formula for the top indicatators for moving up in ranking. One of my sites in ranking number 5 but is neck and neck with the number one site for results. The other site is number 6 for the same term but has virtually no strength in the data like links, mozrank, trust, Social, etc...The sites 7-10 are much stronger on data. Maybe since they are from the same C block that helps? Any advice or experience would be helpful.
Reporting & Analytics | | devonkrusich0 -
Question on correctly using rel="canonical
OK I have a question for the community here. All links below are just used as examples and no relationship or real campaigns are being used with any websites named below. Lets say that my domain is abc.com/whiskey/jack-daniels-whiskey/Gentleman-Jack/ but for Google Analytics tracking purposes I gave another website a tracking link for a banner that is as follows http://abc.com/whiskey/jack-daniels-whiskey/Gentleman-Jack/?utm_source=jackdanials&utm_medium=banner&utm_content=Gentleman-Jack&utm_campaign=holiday%2Bpromotion Since the original URL to my site is http://abc.com/whiskey/jack-daniels-whiskey/Gentleman-Jack and Google will then spider the other site picking up my tracking link within the banner which also contains my original URL, can it cause issues with duplicate content and if so what is the best way to use rel="canonical in this case or would you handle this issue in a different way? Thanks in advance for all your help.
Reporting & Analytics | | DRTBA0 -
(not provided) in GA
Hello, Google is displaying (not provided) for signed in users. Is there any workaround for this ? Any advanced segment by which can know more about such traffic ?
Reporting & Analytics | | seoug_20050