Wordpress + Google Analytics = Pulling My Hair Out

[NiallSmith]

Hey Mozzers,

Quick question for you-

I have analytics set-up for a personal site I run and I know, verifiably it's receiving traffic, however, whenever I access my Google Analytics dashboard, it says I've had zero visits.

Interestingly, today I had a colleague check the site from a foreign country and I could see the page views (within 15 minutes), however, I could not get any information about the site viewer.

I have verified that the Analytics profile is 'receiving data' (which it is) and my Google Webmaster Tools is not reporting any issues?

Finally, I went ahead and updated my profile so that it is pulling from 'www.mydomain.com' instead of 'mydomain.com', I don't know if that'll make any difference, but likewise, I didn't want to go and create the 'little kid in the elevator' analogy, where I'm just pressing a bunch of buttons just because they're there.

So the only changes I've made thus far were deactivating Yoast's SEO plug-in and manually placing the GA code in the header and updating the 'Website's URL' in the profile settings tab of GA from 'mydomain.com' to 'www.mydomain.com'.

With that, I am stumped and praying another one of the esteemed Mozzers out there may be able to help me resolve this. Any thoughts?

[ThompsonPaul]

You'll definitely want to have the non-www version 301 redirecting to the www version, otherwise you're inviting ranking issues with the search engines.

Done correctly, you shouldn't encounter any 404s as a result, and there's nothing needed to do as far as "re-writes to update all the site pages URLs". That's precisely what the 301 redirect is designed to handle.

That said, if you have created links on your own website that point to the non-www version (in navigation or in post content for example) it would be a good idea to change them to what's called the Fully Qualified Domain Name or FQN. 301 redirects are suspected not to pass absolutely all their link juice through, so it's best to link directly to what you've decided will be the FQN for your site - i.e. the www.yoursite.com version.

Does the traffic seem to be flowing into Analytics now as expected?

Paul

[NiallSmith]

Paul,

The non-www version was not 301 redirected, however, when I updated the 'default URL' in the property settings from 'mydomain.com' to 'www.mydomain.com' I started seeing traffic stats again for that profile.

I previously re-wrote the .htaccess file to redirect accordingly, however, was having problems finding pages on my site after I implemented the changes.

Even though I can see the traffic stats now, do you think I should still try and implement the redirect? Likewise, would implementing the 301 create navigation problems (i.e. 404s, pages not being found) if I don't implement some sort of dynamic URL re-writes to update all the site pages URLs?

[ThompsonPaul]

Another thought - if you had set the domain's URL as website.com, but in fact nearly all traffic was going to www.website.com and you didn't have a 301 redirect in place to point the non-www version to the www version, that could cause the data issue as well, I think.

Was the non-www version 301 redirected to the www version?

Paul

[ThompsonPaul]

Have you checked to see if you have any filters or custom segments running in the Analytics profile? This really sounds like a filter is distorting/blocking the data.

Try creating a clean profile of the website in the same account and see if it records data.

Also, when checking, keep in mind the GA is typically 24 hrs behind when reporting data (except for the Real Time section of course)

Paul

[NiallSmith]

Oleg,

Thanks for getting back to me, I am using the asynchronous code and changing the date range, but it didn't help. Nevertheless, thank you for your suggestion!

[OlegKorneitchouk]

Make sure you are using the asynchronous analytics code.  Once you've added it to the site, view the source and make sure it appears exactly as you input it. Make sure you select today's date in the analytics range (default is yesterday).

[NiallSmith]

What do you mean by 'putting the code on'? I would be happy to send you an example, just tell me what you'd like me to include in that?

[Mark_Ginsberg]

hmm, pretty strange - you can always test it by putting the code on, and then viewing it in real time - you should see visits happening, especially if you open the site in a different browser.

You can send through an example and I'll be happy to take a look.