Low bounce rate; need help troubleshooting code
-
I've had an outside developer do a bunch of custom work in Google Analytics to get my site to integrate with Foxycart and accurately report sales in the ecommerce section. With a foxycart upgrade came more GA tweaking, and now my bounce rate is at 1-2%. I know this isn't right, and suspecting there is something triggering GA a second time, causing a second page load, or something.
Could someone that loves code look at http://www.strikemodels.com/ and tell me if they can easily spot what's obliterating the accuracy of my bounce rate calculations? Or do I need to go back to my dev and up the can of GA worms to troubleshoot things?
As you can tell by the code, I'm running the latest version of WP with a few plugins, Thesis 1.8, and on Apache.
-
Glad it is working correctly now.
If you talk to the developer, they may be able to preload the google stack for your analytics pluging to use. The problem is that the ga.js is getting accessed twice. They should have picked that up the during the development, if they had access to your webserver. I would lean on them to fix this issue. It should be a 10min fix for a js programmer.
-
My bounce rate is at 50% this morning, so that must have been it. What I liked about the plugin was that it automatically tagged the external links and pdfs. However, an accurate bounce rate is a more important metric for me.
There's another question in Q&A right now about using an analytics plugin. I'll add my experiences in a comment over there.
Thanks for the help/validation!
-
I've deactivated it, and will check back in the morning to see if the data looks better. I think before when I've looked at the code, I was logged in as admin, and the plugin doesn't insert itself when you're admin, so i was seeing just the one set of code.
-
When you look at the head section you can see where ga.js is injected twice.
I would say that is what she did. She should have disabled the analytics plugin. You should be able to do that from the admin page without a developer.
-
I'm wondering if she put in the async code and didn't realize that it was also in there with the analytics plugin. I'll send her a note in the morning and ask if that might be it. I wanted to do a little figuring out on my own before I started running up her clock and my bill.
-
If you visit gtmetrix.com and look at the 'timeline' you will see two javascript calls one to external-tracking-min.js and ga.js both are most likely calling analytics as on a js scanner I see ga.js being called twice.
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
-
Does Google need Analytics installed to create metrics?
Hi Mozers, Does Google know time on site, number of page visits, bounce rate, etc. even if Google Analytics is NOT installed? Does it measure all that stuff anyway, and if you install the GA code on your site, that is so that YOU can see those metrics? OR can Google only see those metrics if you install GA on your site? Thanks! Jane
Reporting & Analytics | | CalamityJane771 -
Community Discussion - Do you think increasing word count helps content rank better?
In the online marketing community, there is a widespread belief that long-form content ranks better. In today's YouMoz post, Ryan Purthill shares how his research indicated 1,125 to be a magic number of sorts: The closer a post got to this word count, the better it ranked. Diminishing returns, however, were seen once a post exceeded 1,125 words. Does this jibe with your own data and experiences? Do you think increasing word count helps content rank better in general? What about for specific industries and types of content? Let's discuss!
Reporting & Analytics | | Christy-Correll6 -
Need REGEX help
Hi Mozzers, I have multiple filters in one of the GA accounts I manage. I just created new pages that have URLs containing the keyword "spring" (location in texas) and wanted to filter out spring in the GA Spring profile(screenshot) . My issue is it will filter all the URLs containing the kw spring and the website has multiple blog post containing the same kw (spring). So what I need is a Regex formula so I can make sure I track only the Spring tx traffic and not the blog posts. Thanks for letting me know how can I do that! xejc38l.png
Reporting & Analytics | | Ideas-Money-Art0 -
100% Bounce Rate in my Checkout??
I am currently building a report on our bounce rates for the past few years. When I look at older data, from 2010-11 I see varying bounce rates for the checkout, which is fine. When I move to new data, 2011-12 and 2012-13 I am seeing 100% bounce rates and exit rates for my checkout. We do use a 3rd party for our checkout, Shopatron and yes we do have it set up to track. Any thoughts on why I might be seeing this high rate for my bounce rate oh and this also goes for my exit percentage as well.
Reporting & Analytics | | K2_Sports0 -
Multiple-Domain tracking for sister sites- NO retail checkout- Please help
Hello, I have about 5 sites I want to set up multiple-domain tracking in google analytics. All posts I read seem to be focused on cross-domain tracking for the purpose of tracking a visitor from one domain across another domain for shopping cart check outs. I don't need that. I have about 3 sister sites (mastersite.com, sistersite1.com, sistersite2.com, sistersite3.com) related to my primary site. I want 1 Master Analytics Profile to track traffic for all of these sites combined. My visitors will not jump from mastersite.com over to sistersite1.com. There will be no cross-domain visits. How can I set up 1 master google analytics profile that will aggregate traffic data from all sites and present the data to me in one analytics profile. Please help
Reporting & Analytics | | AndreGant0 -
Another high bounce rate
Hi there, One of my top landing pages has an 81% bounce rate. http://www.snowbusiness.com/what-we-do/film,-tv-and-advertising.aspx My first thoughts are purely bad IA and usability, but i know there must be loads of other things people might identify. Thanks in advance, Ben
Reporting & Analytics | | SnowFX0 -
If a page bounces in the woods, can Google Panda hear it?
I have read that after the Panda update a site's bounce rate is an important ranking metric. However, can anyone confirm whether all pages count equally? For instance, my home page gets 5000% more traffic than Deep Page X. If Deep Page X has a poor bounce rate, does it matter as much as if my Homepage has a bad bounce rate? I am guessing not, but wanted to open it up for discussion. If not, it has me wondering on what to do for some of my database driven content. I have some dynamically created pages that have higher bounce rates and minimal unique content. They aren't pure spam or junk, but are likely only about 1% unique from one another. Sounds like a no brainer change post-Panda, right? Well, what if I was the only one targeting the keywords for these pages? The pages pull from info I stored on the U.S. government stimulus program (related to my industry). It then has just about every city, state and county combo in the country for my product. For instance, a page <title>might be "Flemington, NJ Widgets - Somerset County". Something that no one else is targeting and drives minimal traffic.</p> <p> </p> <p>Do I take this content down? I didn't have any affects, positive or negative from Panda, so I am hesitant to take down thousands of Google cached pages.</p></title>
Reporting & Analytics | | TheDude0 -
Bounce Rates - How would you deal with this scenario?
Greetings! I actually don't have a definitive answer to this so wish to throw it out to the community for thoughts and feedback. I have a client who we shall call "Site 1", but they also have a job board, we shall call "Site 2". A product of their own success, they have a high bounce rate with visitors landing on Site 1, seeing a job they want to apply for and bouncing straight off to Site 2. The problem is that this is resulting in Google seeing some of these pages as having bounce rates of 80% to 100%, based on this formula: Bounce rate = total number of visits viewing only one page / total number of visits Now, I hate anything black hat or grey hat so wish to know how you would deal with this... If the results from Site 2 were displayed in a new framed page on Site 1, would this still be classed as a bounce? If when they click on a job on Site 1, they were taken to an intermediate page on Site 1 saying "Thank you, you are being redirected to your chosen job" for 5 seconds before being taken to Site 2, would this be classed as a bounce? Perhaps the job they wish to apply for 'pulled' from Site 2 and actually displayed in a new page on Site 1 would be a better way to go? I think that option 1 might work, sure that number 3 would but not so sure about number 2, but look forward to your comments and thoughts. Regards, Andy
Reporting & Analytics | | Andy.Drinkwater0