Google Analytics - my continuing adventures
-
Hello
I'd appreciate views of the various metrics I'm struggling with in GA:
I've run 2 different reports that provide 2 different outputs.
1. In Standard Reporting you can report in Traffic Sources on Organic Search by Keyword, which returns the number of Visits.
2. In Custom Reporting you can define the Keyword dimension and the Organic Searches metric, which returns the number of Organic Searches.
This returns 2 different numbers. For example, over the last month for a given term report 1 returns 77,306 visits whilst report 2 returns 52,589 organic searches.
I have found some definitions:
- "Visits represent the number of individual sessions initiated by all the visitors to your site."
- "Organic Searches: number of organic searches that happened within a session. This metric is search engine agnostic."
My understanding of these definitions is that report 2 should return a larger value than report 1 rather than what is happening (i.e. report 1 returns a greater value than report 2).
Does anyone have a greater understanding of what these mean and relate to? Does anyone have any views on which metric is more useful?
Thanks
Neil
-
Hi Neil,
The reason #2 is lower because a "session" is a period of time. A session is either 30 minutes or once a person closes her/his browser.
For instance, if you had a cupcake shop and I Googled "cupcakes" and came to your site. Then popped out and Googled "buttercream cupcakes" and came back to your site in less than 30 minutes without closing my browser, my searches would count as 2 in #1 and 1 in #2.
Hope that helps!
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 exclude IP from Google Analytic?
Hello Guys, I am admin of google analytic, i am trying to exclude traffic in google analytic from admin, view section then filter but not there is no button of save? Can anyone please help me? PFA of image. zOkvX1n.jpg
Reporting & Analytics | | devdan0 -
Discrepancy between FB PPC and Google Analytics
This question was answered in 2011 here: http://moz.com/community/q/facebook-ppc-number-of-clicks-according-to-fb-different-than-visits-in-analytics. Wanted to post it to the community to see if anyone had any new thoughts in the last 3 years. I have been running campaigns on Facebook and seeing dramatic discrepancies between Facebook and GA's numbers. For example, I ran a Facebook ad campaign for a chiropractor where FB shows 35 clicks to the website, but GA only shows 2! An attorney ran a Facbook promotion, got 4 clients who actually filled out a questionnaire online, but GA only showed 2 visitors exiting off the form completion page. Is this because the users did not have JS/cookies enabled? Something else? What is the recommended work around? Tracking URL?
Reporting & Analytics | | aj6130 -
Why my WMT is showing more clicks than my Google Analytics Organic Search Traffic?
Hello Everybody, Can somebody help me figure out this puzzle: My WMT is showing 6000 clicks, while my Organic Traffic in Google Analytics is showing only 3500 daily ... how is that possible? Best Regards
Reporting & Analytics | | Muhammad_Jabali0 -
Solid Place to learn intermediate-adbanced Google Analytics
Hello Everyone, I've been using Google Analytics for some years now, and I never really used it in an advanced way (alerts, goals, conversions, etc...) I was wondering if there was a good place for me to learn GA so I can start using it to it's full potental. Thanks Zach
Reporting & Analytics | | Zachary_Russell0 -
Google Analytics Content Experiments don't deliver 50/50?
Our A/B test is actually delivering at about a 70/30 page view rate. 70% in favor of the original version and only 30% of the new. We are sending 100% of our traffic to this homepage test. Has anyone else experienced this? There seems to be a lot of folks experiencing this.....anyone know why?
Reporting & Analytics | | VistageSEO0 -
Google Analytic Tracking Issue (&utm_nooverride=1)
Hello, We have a problem that means we are unable to track our AdWords and organic work at all. Looking at "/All Traffic Sources" and clicking on "Ecommerce Tab" in Analytics we can see that (made up ratio :)):
Reporting & Analytics | | jannkuzel
£2 is attributed to Google/ CPC
£1 is attributed to Google / Organic
But £100 to Payment Provider/ referral and also various referrals from banking transaction pages. All of the revenue/conversions are being credited to the payment provider or the bank security checks the payment goes through. After having done some research we have found that the problem may be that Google Analytics attributes the purchase to the most recent click (on the payment provider button) rather than the initial click on the cpc campaign/organic or direct etc. Some people have suggested using the "&utm_nooverride=1"
tag which we wanted to run past you guys and confirm whether adding
this tag to the payment provider 'buy now' button on our website will
presumably fix this referral problem? Alternatively does the tag need
to be entered into our CPC campaigns as well? Or can you please guide
us in another way? We have also heard that "cross-domain" tracking could be the solution. So we are really confused what to do and where hoping someone had maybe been through something similar and could advice before we fully launch into a solution. In addition, it should be noted that our 'Goals Funnel Visualisation'
of 'checkout' breaks up at the penultimate stage of the checkout. All
customers exit through the /checkout_process (penultimate) but are recognised returning to the successful checkout page but there is a missing link in between these
two stages as 0% pass through is shown even though they do return? Thank you so much in advance for all your help.0 -
Strange increase in Direct traffic in Google analytics
For past 2 weeks, several of our sites have strange increase in direct traffic in Google Analytics. we also have another tracking code, and in this account we don't have any big changes, so this is very strange what is happening. We didn't changed any codes, and none of the changes were done to application. Any ideas why this is happening? z7ME9.jpg
Reporting & Analytics | | InformMedia0 -
Google Analytics - April Search Report Data Gone For All Clients - Anyone Else Seeing This?
Hey everyone, In the last hour I was doing some SEO referral reportingin Google Analytics and discovered that my April data was completely gone (flat lined to zero). Specifically, if i select a date range for any point in april and select search from the advanced segments area I am seeing this issue. This is happening for ALL of my active clients... anyone else seeing this?
Reporting & Analytics | | dpeddle0