Google analytics question

[jameswalkerson]

Ok so in my traffic sources break down I have 3 sections: direct, organic, and referral. My question is under the referral tab I have recently noticed a new traffic source, my own website....

How is this possible? My top referring site is my own website.... Is this considered direct traffic or how is this being traced?

[ThompsonPaul]

The other 2 areas that most frequently cause this kind of problem are cross-domain tracking and subdomain tracking.

Cross domain tracking usually comes from trying to track 3rd party shopping carts on eCommerce-oriented sites.

Subdomain errors come from adding a subdomain to your site and just adding the same tracking code to your subdomain pages as your main site.

In both of these instances, the tracking code needs to be customized slightly to collect the data correctly.

If your own website is the biggest source of referral traffic, you have a significant problem which needs to be tracked down. It means not only is your referral info incorrect, but a lot of your other stats (total visits, pages/visit. time per page, even bounce rate) are also incorrect.

Paul

[mikecp]

It should also be noted that even with a completely proper setup of Google Analytics, some self-referrals are 'normal'. Anytime a user waits 30 minutes between clicks on your site, it will initiate a new session, and thus, a self-referral.

Obviously, it's not TOO common for this to happen, so your total self-referrals should always be a very small percentage of total referrals.

If you're seeing a LOT of self-referrals, as others have said, the most common cause is a page or pages that are missing the code.

[Esaky]

If you are using WordPress hosted site and using All in SEO Plugin, just install the codvalue option. Sometimes installing your code in the theme might give you error like this.

Do not install twice, that might give you double traffic in google analystic.

[MattAntonino]

I would agree with mememax - usually this means one or more pages doesn't have the Analytics code. They go to "your site" (with the Analytics), then they go to another site (no tag) and back to your site (with Analytics).

That cycle will create a "new" session - referred from your own domain, just a page without the code.

Good luck finding it!

[mememax]

Hi James, that seems weird. Are you sure that you've included the analytics code in all your webpages? Maybe one page don't have your code so analytics may think that is an external source even if it's an internal link... dig into your referral, see the url which sent the visit and check the html code.