Google News traffic spike mystery; referring URLs all blank, Omniture tags didn't fire.
-
Our content is occasionally featured in Google News. We recently have had two episodes where this happened, but (a) nearly all the referring URLs were blank, and (b) our backend logs show 3-4x more requests for the article in question than Omniture does.
In other words, hundreds of thousands of visitors requested a URL from our site (as proven by the traffic logs), but don't seem to have come from Google News (because HTTP_REFERER was blank), and didn't execute the onpage javascript tag to notify Omniture of the pageview.
Perhaps this has nothing to do with Google News, but it is too strong a coincidence that the two times we were on there recently, the same thing happened: big backend traffic spike that is not seen by Omniture.
It is as if Google News causes browsers to pre-fetch our article without executing the javascript on the page. And without sending a referring URL.
Has anyone else seen anything like this before?
Stats from the recent episode:
- 835,000 HTTP requests for the article URL (logged by our servers)- these requests came from 280,000 distinct IP addresses (70% US)
- the #1 referring URL is blank. This accounts for 99.4% of requests. Which, in itself, is hard to believe. These people had to come from somewhere. I believe browsers don't pass HTTP_REFERER when you click from an SSL page to a non-SSL page, but I think Google News doesn't bounce users to SSL by default.That said, we do see other content pages with 70-90% blank referring URLs. Rarely 99+% though.
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
-
Google Tag Manager chrome plugin to diagnose Analytics issues
Hi I've just used Google Tag Manager chrome plugin to look at possible analytics issues on a clients site and it has reported that its Analytics ID is being tracked twice. 1 is Universal and the other is Universal Asynchronous And when i click the question mark next to the 'Where to Optimise' info in GTM this page is displayed with teh following info highlighted: https://developers.google.com/analytics/devguides/collection/gajs/asyncMigrationExamples ga.js is a legacy library. If you are starting a new implementation we recommend you use the latest version of this library, analytics.js. For exisiting implementations, learn how to migrate from ga.js to analytics.js. Since both versions seem to be on there surely i dont need to migrate but just delete the old non-asynchronous version ? Or do i need do anything else or additional ? All Best Dan
Reporting & Analytics | | Dan-Lawrence0 -
Enchance Ecommerce Tag Fired on every page i visit why?
Hello Experts, I have added given below code (A) on my website and given below (B) setting in GTM. Now whenever i visit the site then two tags fired that is google analytic and enchance ecommerce. GA tag fired that is fine but why enhance ecommerce tag fired even if i visit any page? I think enhane ecommerce tag should be fired when i click on addtocart right?A)```
Reporting & Analytics | | bkmitesh
dataLayer.push({ 'event':'addToCart', 'ecommerce':{ 'currencyCode':'EUR', 'add':{ // 'add' actionFieldObject measures. 'products':[{ // adding a product to a shopping cart. 'name':'Triblend Android T-Shirt', 'id':'12345', 'price':'15.25', 'brand':'Google', 'category':'Apparel', 'variant':'Gray', 'quantity':1 }] } } }); Track type : Event Event Category: `Ecommerce` Event Action: `Add to Cart` Enable Enhanced Ecommerce Features: `true` Use Data Layer: `true` Basic Settings - Document Path: `{{url path}}` Firing Rule: `{{event}}` equals `addToCart``Thanks!`0 -
How can you add a rel canonical tag if you haven't created the wrong pages?
For one of our white paper campaigns we are getting multiple URL's some how but we only have one version of the page. So do I put the rel canonical tag on that one single page? Will that fix the other url's from being indexed? I'm assuming people are typing in the urls with underscores and capital or non-capital letters and it's showing up that way in analytics. Thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | Sika220 -
Google analytics is not tracking well
Hey, There is something not working in our GA account, its shows too many visits per day, when look where this traffic comes from, the majority comes from (not set). Please find attached. Really appreciate help! Thank you! BvmAKtO
Reporting & Analytics | | Comunicare0 -
Find out who mentioned my URL on Facebook
I am seeing a big spike in traffic coming from Facebook. The referrer looks like this (at least sometimes, mostly it is just https://m.facebook.com or http://www.facebook.com/😞 http://www.facebook.com/l.php?u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.terminretter.de%2F&h=rAQGSwECjAQGiZFaVEkz7U2od1RNFVtxhVQNG__EujSznUw&s=1 Is there a way to know who shared my URL on facebook?
Reporting & Analytics | | cengelhardt0 -
Google Webmaster. Backlinks
GWMT only shows that there are 3 domains pointing to a site of mine. I'm looking under "Links to site". But this can't be true because the site is pretty old and I know there are hundreds of domains that point to this one. What would explain this discrepancy? And is there some other free tool that will show all the backlinks? I've used Opensite explorer but that tool isn't close to comprehensive as GWMT usually is (based on other sites I've analyzed)
Reporting & Analytics | | priceseo0 -
Google WebMasters Tool - Preferred Domain
I just added Google Analytics to my wordpress site with Google Analytics by YOAST. I then added Google WebMaster tools through via verify through google analytics account. I then tried to set a preferred domain. I chose the non www. version; however, google wanted me to verify ownership of both versions in order to set a preferred domain. I then added the www. version of my domain. I was able to set the non-www. version to my preferred domain. Now, there are two example.com's in my webmaster tools. I have 10 sites. I intend to replicate this process on all of my sites. Do I have to leave the non-preferred version of my sites in the google webmaster? Can I delete it after I have set my preferred version? If I delete the non-preferred version will it delete my setting on the preferred version because it is now no longer verified (saved)?
Reporting & Analytics | | JML11791 -
Google Analytics: Do url redirects show up
Good Morning from 6 degrees c mostly cloudy wetherby UK 🙂 A redirect has been set up with the effect that when you key in www.hyload.co.uk it forwards to www.ikogroup.co.uk My question is please...within Google analytics will referall traffic from www.hyload.co.uk show up in referral traffic or because its a redirect will it be counted as direct traffic. Thanks in advance, David
Reporting & Analytics | | Nightwing0