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.
Did Analytics change the way to handle Google images searches on Dec 12?
-
Dear all,
One of the sites I'm monitoring receives a lot of traffic from image searches or images that appear in universal search results.
On Dec 12th, 2015, the bounce rate for these sessions went from around 30% the day before to around 87%. See screen shot below.
Did anybody notice similar bounces in the bounce rate? Did Google change something in the way that image search is handled?
Looking forward to your ideas!
-
Interesting. At this point, you have a lot more data on the subject than I do. I know the changes to how Google cached/displayed images caused a lot of headaches for enteprise SEOs in the US, but I don't know much about that situation with Google.fr. Your explanation seems plausible, given the data.
If your explanation is true, I'm not sure what you can do about it. These referrals are just inaccurate, and that bounce rate is meaningless. As you said, the design basically makes the bounce inevitable.
I would be reluctant to remove it completely, because you might want to be able to track any changes Google makes to how this is handled, but I would certainly remove it from your overall metrics somehow. You and/or your team shouldn't be judged negatively on this bounce rate.
-
I spend some time observing GA's Real Time reports and here is what I found.
I first noticed that also on Dec 12th, the source "images.google / organic" makes its appearance in GA.
If you use google.com (or probably all other versions of Google that use the same interface), GA doesn't log a visit till one clicks on either the enlarged image or the "Visit page" button. (screenshot with French flag attached, does this interface have a specific name?) The visit is logged as "google / organic", not "images.google / organic".
But if you use google.fr (or probably all other versions of Google that use the same interface, I confirmed with google.de), GA logs a visit even if you haven't really left Google, when the image is shown hovering above its host page. The source is "images.google.fr / referral" at this point.
But when you then click on the cross to close the image or on the "Site Web pour cette image" link in the side bar, hence if you really go to the site hosting the image, the source information is replaced by "images.google / organic". (screenshot with map of France attached)
So it seems quite logical that
a) the bounce rate for the source "images.google.fr / referral" is close to 100% and that
b) the source "images.google / organic" appeares at the same timeThis raises three questions for me
1. How was the behaviour before Dec 12th?
2. Wouldn't it be appropriate now to exclude entirely trafic provided by the source "images.google.fr / referral" (as well as images.google.de etc.), as this is only an enlargement in Google's search results and not a visit of the site?
3. How is it possible that the bounce rate of "images.google.fr / referral" is not 100%? Why do certain sessions still get multiple page views?I also looked into what you had suggested, if only certain images or phrases had the high bounce rates.
The answer is that for the traffic logged as referral traffic, there is no keyword data. But if I look at the landing pages, the general rule is a bounce rate between 75 and 95% for "images.google.fr / referral". The landing pages with lower bounce rates, simply have very few sessions, so that's probably just a coincidence. I noticed though that there are quite a few pages that are redirects for images that don't exist anymore that have a low bounce rate or even bounce rate 0%
How do you think, we should deal with these new settings now?
2016-01-25_images%2Bafter%2Bclicke%2Bon%2Bimage.jpg 2016-01-26_google-fr%2Bafter%2Bclick%2Bon%2Bimage%2Bin%2Bwidget%2Bfrance.jpg
-
I'm sorry - I misread the bounce rate part. So, image search is definitely driving clicks, but your bounce rates in GA skyrocketed - gotta. Unfortunately, I'm not aware of anything on the Google side that would blow up bounce rates once someone got to your site.
Have you checked out what that actual experience flow looks like right now? First thing I'd do is try a couple of your most popular image searches and make sure nothing obvious is acting up.
Do the bounces seem clustered around any particular images or phrases, or are they across everything?
-
Hello Dr. Pete,
Thank you for stepping in!
Did you see similar changes in bounce rates at the time?
Also, I am a bit confused that you speak of "image impressions" while I referred to bounce rates. My understanding was that if Analytics loggs a session with for example referring site / images.google.fr as source, it means that the user is actually visiting the site, in other words that the user has clicked on the "Consulter la page / Go to the page" button. Am I wrong?
Just to avoid misunderstandings: I am not referring to the number of sessions with "referring site / images.google.fr" as source, but to what Analytics shows as bounce rates. The number of sessions even has increased for my particular site.
Thanks for your help!
-
Here in the US, Google changed image search a few months back and started caching everything, which killed image impressions overnight. I thought that roll-out was international, but I'm not experienced enough with vertical search to know for sure. Did that potentially just hit France?
-
No sorry, I don't have a French one to check.
-
Thanks Martijn,
Did you check on a single site or on multiple site.
Is this maybe a francophone thing? In a Francophone forum, I found at least one other webmaster who reported the same observation
http://forum.webrankinfo.com/google-images-hausse-soudaine-taux-rebond-t185121.htmlDo you have a .fr site that you could check?
Best wishes
Frank
-
Hi Frank,
No we don't see it in our dataset, I've checked around 30k sessions and the bounce rate definitely isn't seeing changes like what you're seeing.
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 track google auto search suggestion click?
Hello Guys, In google.co.uk when I search SEL and google gives me option of different different sites and when I click on any one site then that click tracking I need. I have attached the screenshot to understand easily. Is it possible to track such things or possible via server logs etc? TV99h
Reporting & Analytics | | micey1231 -
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 -
Tracking time spent on a section of a website in Google Analytics
Hi, I've been asked by a client to track time spent or number of pages visited on a specific section of their website using Google Analytics but can't see how to do this. For example, they have a "golf" section within their site and want to measure how many people either visit 5 page or more within the golf section or spend at least 6 minutes browsing the various golf section pages. Can anyone advise how if this can be done, and if so, how I go about it. Thanks
Reporting & Analytics | | geckonm0 -
Is it possible to use Google Tag Manager to pass a user’s text input into a form field to Google analytics?
Hey Everyone, I finally figured out how to use auto event tracking with Google Tag Manager, but didn't get the data I wanted. I want to see what users are typing into the search field on my site (the URL structure of my site isn't set up properly to use GA's built-in site search tracking). So, I set up the form submit event tracking in Google Tag Manager and used the following as my event tracking parameters: Category: Search Action: Search Value When I test and look in Google Analytics I just see: "search" and "search value." I wanted to see the text that I searched on my site. Not just the Action and Category of the event.... Is what I'm trying to do even possible? Do I need to set up a different event tracking parameter? Thanks everyone!
Reporting & Analytics | | DaveGuyMan0 -
Referral Traffic vs. Campaign Traffic in Google Analytics
I have two sites: a blog and an ecommerce site. The blog funnels people to the ecommerce site. In Analytics I'm seeing declines in referral traffic from the blog to the ecommerce site. During the same time I'm seeing an increase in campaign traffic to the ecommerce site, with most campaign traffic coming from the blog. I believe the increase in campaign traffic is largely a result of simply having installed more tracking links. This leads me to believe that the declines I'm seeing in referral traffic is simply a result of the increase in campaign traffic. In other words, what was once counted and reported as being referral traffic is now being counted and reported as campaign traffic. So my question is this: In Google Analytics is campaign traffic ALSO reported as referral traffic, or is campaign traffic reported separately and not duplicated in referral traffic reports? I'll provide a concrete example to make this more clear in case it isn't: Say site X sends 1000 visits each month to site Y. Say 50 of those visits come from a single link on X. If that link is changed so that campaign Z data info added (via the Google URL Builder), would you expect to then see 950 referral visits each month from site X to site Y plus 50 campaign visits to site Y via new campaign Z, or would you continue to see 1000 referral visits plus the new 50 campaign visits? Many thanks in advance to anyone that can shed some light on this.
Reporting & Analytics | | aaronprimal0 -
Google Analytics - Keywords (not set) or ( not provided) WHY???
In Analytics, most of my visitors are landing on my home page, but when trying to see wich keywords they use, most of them are: (not set) or ( not provided) See screencast: http://screencast.com/t/AKwPW76qLVsN Can you tell why? What is going on? Is there a way to solve this? Thank you, BigBlaze
Reporting & Analytics | | BigBlaze2050 -
Easiest way to get out of Google local results?
Odd one this, but what's the easiest way to remove a website from the Google local listings? Would removing all the Google map listings do the job? A client of ours is suffering massively since the Google update in the middle of last month. Previously they would appear no1 or no2 in the local results and normally 1 or 2 in the organic results. However, since the middle of last month any time they rank on the first page for a local result, their organic result has dropped massively to at least page 4. If I set my location as something different in google, say 100 miles away, they then rank well for the organic listings (obviously not appearing for local searches). When I change it back to my current location the organic listing is gone and they are back to ranking for the local. Since the middle of July the traffic from search engines has dropped about 65%. All the organic rankings remain as strong as ever just not in the areas where they want to get customers from!! The idea is to remove the local listing and get the organics reranking as the ctr on those is much much higher. On a side note, anyone else notice very poor ctr on google local listings? Maybe users feel they are adverts thanks
Reporting & Analytics | | ccgale0 -
Has Anyone Else Noticed A Jump In Google Analytics Traffic Since Session Parameters Were Changed?
Ever since Google Analytics changed their session parameters August 12th I have seen a 20% jump in organic traffic & bounce rates along with a decline in pages/visit and conversion rate. To be clear, I don't put a whole heck of a lot of stock in these metrics as stand-alone indications of how my site is performing. I'm just trying to get to the bottom of this blip. I noticed some other people mentioned a similar phenomenon in other SEO forums and blog comments, but nobody seems to be talking about this here at SEOMoz (unless I just haven't looked in the right place). I'm not saying the change I noticed has anything to do with the session update, I'm just wondering if anyone else has experienced something similar so that I can either cross it off the list of possible causes or explore further.
Reporting & Analytics | | eTundra0