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.
Android Webview & Safari (in-app) without any referrer information in Google Analytics
-
I've got a client that gets a considerable amount of traffic that:
- Enters on an interior page (that we are running properly tagged ads for on various platforms)
- Bounces
- Has a browser of either Android Webview or Safari (in-app) which I believe indicates the website is being viewed within a mobile app
- Has no referrer data: (direct) / (none)
We've tested several scenarios (Facebook app, Gmail app, etc.) and ruled them out. Anyone know what this might be?
Thanks in advance!!
-
Oh, excellent work!
Good to know for the future!
-
UPDATE: We were able to get tracking code on the Pandora ads and determined that it was the source of nearly all of those visits. So, it WAS Pandora all along.
-
Ah, that's interesting!
We don't get Pandora over here in the UK so it's been a while since I touched it. Does it still require/run in flash? That might go some way to explaining weird referrer data...
-
Hey! I haven't resolved the issue yet, but I'm working with the client to add some tracking to all of their Pandora ads. I'm thinking that might be the culprit. Turns out the are running several ad types so there are some that may not be tagged after all.
The implementation isn't the issue, because the only time we see this 11 issue is from this specific traffic source. Everything else behaves normally and typically aligns with metrics we get from other sources.
I will definitely keep you posted about updates. (And will probably throw a party when I finally get it resolved!)
-
Hey Sarah,
Just checking back to see if you're still struggling with this?
-
Hah!
Ah, now, that's particularly interesting. Got a link to the site handy? Might be worth exploring the implementation.
-
The more I learn about this, the less I know.
It appears that each individual session is actually being counted as 11 sessions. Unless, of course, 11 people from the same small town visited the website on the same day, viewed the same pages and entered the exact same typo into the coupon code box.
Everything my mystery traffic does appears to happen in multiples of 11. I'd love to think that it's just the Internet reminding me that Spinal Tap is awesome, but I suspect there may be more to it.
-
Yikes, definitely sounds like there's some exploring to be done!
I'm going to see if I can rope in some smart people to help, and get back to you.
-
Thank you so much for your response!
Yep. I've looked at it by screen resolution, device, location, ISP, demographics...just about everything. Every indication is that this is NOT bot traffic. The distribution percentages of the various attributes are all fairly similar to the "regular" traffic. The only exception is that my phantom traffic appears to be a little older. The traffic patterns also follow the regular traffic, and those patterns are usually influenced by offline advertising efforts.
This feels like some kind of rogue mobile ad campaign, but we have ruled out all mobile campaigns that we are knowingly running (Facebook, Instagram, Google Display on Pandora, etc.). We are also seeing bounce rates significantly higher than the rest of our mobile campaign traffic which would theoretically rule out the possibility that our tracking code is getting stripped out somehow on some of our campaigns. We have ruled out both promotional and transactional emails.
This is easily the most frustrating analytics mystery I've ever encountered!
-
Hey there,
My gut feeling is that this sounds like bot traffic.
Many generic systems represent themselves as safari-compatible agents, given that this is one of the main mobile web platforms.
I'd be interested in understanding how this traffic looks when you segment it by other attributes; specifically, screen resolution, colour depth and a few other of the 'system' variables in GA tend to give some good clues as to whether this is human or bot traffic. Have you explored these variables, and seen unusual patterns (such as everybody using the same browser, or the same screen resolution)?
Even if there's variation in these areas, it's worth looking at the patterns over time - there are a lot of systems which, for example, monitor site performance, and as part of this legitimately emulate a variety of browsers... However, they tend to do so consistently, e.g,. at the same time of day.
I'd definitely do some digging to see if you can see patterns which suggest that this isn't real traffic, and then, either way, work out what the next steps are.
I presume that you've enabled the setting in your GA profile to exclude common bots/agents?
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
-
Strange landing page in Google Analytics
Hello MOZ Community, The website in question is https://x-y.com/ When i looked at the landing pages report in GA , x-y.com is appended at the end of every URL like this. https://x-y.com/x-y.com When i open the above URL in GA interface, it shows page not found. This is obvious as there is no such URL.
Reporting & Analytics | | Johnroger
The metrics like sessions, Users, Bounce rate all look good. In the property settings, The default URL is written like this http:// cell-gate.com (Please note that s is missing in property settings). But how is traffic tracked correctly How do i solve this problem. What settings should we change to make the landing pages report look ok Thanks0 -
How to change domains in Google Analytics without losing the data
Hi there, We recently changed our domain from .COM to .NET so that all our subdomains from external pages matched. Right now in Google Console we have our new .NET website being tracked, but in GA we are still tracking .COM. It is also causing issues with MOZ crawling our site because of the .COM/.NET discrepancy. My question is what is the best way to change our Google Analytics from .COM to .NET without losing historical data and what considerations do we need to change before implementing this? Our team was concerned that just downloading the old data would be too vast and it we wouldn't be able to continue manipulating it dynamically in GA. Thanks!!
Reporting & Analytics | | cPanel-LLC.0 -
Is there a way to filter all computers on a specific IPv6 network in Google Analytics?
Is there a quick way of filtering the IP addresses for all the computers on a network that's using IPv6? I want to filter out visits to our websites from the devices on our office network, but each computer (and phone and tablet) seems to have a different address. It _looks _like they all start the same way, though. One computer is xxxx:xxxx:xxxx:xxxx:aaaa:aaaa:aaaa:aaaa, another is xxxx:xxxx:xxxx:xxxx:bbbb:bbbb:bbbb:bbbb, my phone is xxxx:xxxx:xxxx:xxxx:cccc:cccc:cccc:cccc, etc. Does this mean that xxxx:xxxx:xxxx:xxxx is the address for our network as a whole, and I can just set up a Google Analytics filter for "IP addresses starting with..."? Or would doing that also filter out hits from, like, every visitor within a 20 mile radius of our office? If I need to simply put in the individual addresses for each and every device, I will. I'm just hoping it doesn't come to that. Thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | BrianAlpert780 -
Difference Between Android Browser & Android Webview
Hello All, In google analytic I can see traffic from android browser & android webview so android webview is also a browser? Thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | dhisman0 -
Would updating Meta Titles affect Google analytics tracking?
Hi All, I need a little bit of help. We need to optimize our blog's articles Meta titles for SEO which all exceed 100 characters. I was told that if we change the titles, google analytics would split the tracking pages and count the data as 2 pages (old title and new title). Has any of you have this experience before and if so, is there a way to avoid google analytics counting this as two pages? Thanks in advance! Viviana http://analyteguru.com/ http://analyteguru.com/ http://analyteguru.com/
Reporting & Analytics | | mchoi0 -
Referral Traffic from Google
Hello, I have a question about my company's new website. I've worked in SEO and studied Google Analytics results for a few years now but have never really come across something like this. I started in this position in January of this year and when I started breaking down the traffic sources in Google Analytics, I noticed most of the traffic was coming from Google.com as a referral source. I had never seen Google.com as a referral source before so I looked into options for what it could be. It was not a paid ad and our organic traffic was coming through in Analytics, Before I could get any further, our new website was launched (we switched CRM's to WordPress) and the referral traffic from google went from 2,966 in January of 2015 to 22 in February 2015. for more comparison, in February of 2014, the referral traffic from Google was 2,496. I expected a drop when we switched CRM's but we correctly re-directed all pages and created a new sitemap and our organic traffic is up since the switch (not enough to cover drop in referral). I thought at first this had to do with our Google sellers account being de-activated when we made the switch, but I quickly fixed this over a month ago and no change. I'm wondering if anyone has ever seen Google.com come through as a referral source in Google Analytics and if they we're able to figure out what it actually was. This would be a great help! Thank you, Alex
Reporting & Analytics | | RASEO1 -
Google Analytics: Different stats for date range vs single month?
I've been scratching my head, chin, and you name it over this one. I have an advanced segment to remove bot traffic from my data. When I look at the Audience Overview data for a single month (let's say Aug). I am shown a session count. No problems here, however If I set the date range to (January - August). The august monthly stats is incorrect, much lower. What this means is that, if I export a CSV report from Jan-Aug, the data is wrong compared to individually recording a month. Anyone faced this? I've asked the question over at the Google Analytics technical section as well, but no answer P.S I even used the 'control the number of sessions used to calculate this report' tool but no luck.
Reporting & Analytics | | Bio-RadAbs0 -
How to remove unwanted dynamic parameters from a URL in Google Analytics
Hi, Would really appreciate some help with this. I have been experimenting with RegEx to achieve this but as I’ve never used it before am currently failing miserably. We have conversion pages i need to set goals for that are formatted as below: https://www.domain.co.uk//Application_Form/(S(ewhbqp5cki0mppuzukunkqno))/enterCardDetails.aspx I need to remove the (s(xxx)) section from the URL as rather than one pages i currently have thousands of unique URL's. What’s catching me out is that as it’s not a URL parameter I can’t discount and as half way through can’t just do head matches etc to /entercarddetails Help would be much appreciated. Thanks.
Reporting & Analytics | | Sarbs0