I have data missing in Google and don't know who to turn to for help
-
Hi everyone,
I know this isn't the 'Google help forum' but I'm stuck and I hope someone here might be able to point me in the right direction.
For a period last month - Thursday 22nd to Sunday 25th November Google Analytics reports our site as having 0 visits.
In addition we have two days which were strangely low - Weds 21st 105 visits, Weds 28th Nov 78 visits.
We normally get between 1000 and 1200 visits on a weekday from a global audience (I know that was the Thanksgiving weekend, but the US accounts for ~10% of total traffic).
Has anyone else had this problem? If so, what did you do? The "report a bug" board on the Google help forum has a few entries like this, people with 0 visits shouting "help!" into the void with no response.
Ideas?
-
Hi Paul,
Despite the fact that it looks like I won't get this back (though I've asked for server logs, so who knows) that was a stellar answer, thank you.
I will definitely add another profile to the site and also set up a notification warning.
I'll also make sure I keep this handy and refer back to it every time I set up a site!
Thanks again.
-
Sorry to be the bearer of bad news, Steven, but generally if you've lost data in Google Analytics, you'll never get a solution from Google themselves. There's just no support for these kinds of issues unless your a big player.
About all you can do is focus on making certain that nothing was done on your end to compromise the collecting of the data. Once you've confirmed that, you can use alternate sources to estimate the unrecorded traffic to correct for the hole in your data.
You'll want to really dive in to rule out anything that could have compromised the data collection. Any changes whatsoever to the site need to be investigated.
- Any changes that added or changed the order of JavaScripts could have created conflicts with the GA tag.
- Template changes could have resulted in an inadvertent removal of the tags, with later edits reinstating them
- any adjustments of the tags themselves, e.g. adding download or outbound link tracking
Really put on your thinking cap for this one - it can take some serious digging through what was going on on the site during that time period. Also have a look at the characteristics of the little bit of traffic you got on the latter 2 days to see if that point to a culprit. I just had an issue like this on the weekend for a client's site. Traffic dropped to a tenth what it should be. Turned out it was only registering traffic from mobile - which uses a different template. So I had a hint - later confirmed - that the GA tag had been edited on the main template (causing data problems) but not on the mobile template which collected normally.
To confirm you actually did have traffic, (e.g. that you weren't having server outages for example) and to get an estimate of the lost traffic, you can use your server logs. if you're hosted on a system using cPanel, you probably have something like AWStats automatically collecting traffic data in your server logs. These logs collect data differently than GA's JavaScript tags, but they'll still give proof you had traffic, and a good approximation of the volume.
To be better prepared in case this happens in the future, I strongly recommend a couple of steps.
- Create two additional GA profiles for your website - one called RAW which you NEVER touch - no filters at all, no customisations whatsoever. It's your backup if all else fails. And a second called TEST where you try out EVERY customisation before adding it to your working profile. (Note these will only start collecting data from the day created, so do it asap)
- Add another lightweight analytics app to your site, or at least make sure you're satisfied with the data collected by your server logging as a backup for what GA is collecting - and have a plan for archiving it.
- Add a custom Intelligence Alert to GA to email you anytime it detects a drop in traffic. I generally set mine to anything more than a 25% drop compared to same day the previous week. That way you'll know as soon as you have a problem and can investigate immediately.
- Add an Annotation to GA every time you make any kind of an adjustment or change to the site. Makes it much easier to track back to what you did that might have caused traffic changes/problems - or even to understand what led to significant improvement. (Because your memory will never be enough for that
- Set up a site availability monitoring service like Pingdom.com to notify you anytime you site becomes unavailable (if you don't already have something in place). Don't rely on your host for this.
Hope this gives you some next steps to deal with the problem. I know the frustration.
Paul
-
I forgot to mention - I checked if there were any filters on there and there aren't.
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 Trends Data Weird Since 1/1/2022
I am finding several instances of weird data drop offs on Google Trends at 1/1/2022. It seems like it's for data associated with a type/category as opposed to a search term. Here are some examples of "search interest" dropping suddenly off to next-to-nothing for prominent brands. Patagonia / clothing company Lands' End / clothing company Carhartt / workwear company Example screenshot.Capture.PNG Does anyone know what the cause of this is? Has Google stated anything directly about why the data suddenly changed so significantly?
Reporting & Analytics | | LivDetrick0 -
Google is just plain confusing now
I know, many people are up in arms with Google with their very frequent recent changes. I guess some of this is good - but at times I am also warming to the opinion that they are just losing the plot. To illustrate my point - check this ranking history for a keyword: Toyota South Africa
Reporting & Analytics | | ZakDI'm not sure how this image will display - but for no obvious apparent reason, from 02/10 - we were ranked 5, and now on 9/10 dropped right down to 44. I mean how is on supposed to explain, and rectify this when Google just keeps on changing the playing fields? shrug Ranking.png
0 -
Google analytics for mobile apps - do we need different id's?
Dear all, if I want to implement Google Analytics for my mobile apps: Do I need different accounts or id's to ensure separate tracking of my website and mobile apps? How did you do it? Thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | HMK-NL0 -
Google Analytics Queries
Hi we used a web company who put our analytics under their company name we have left them and set up a new tracking code not associated with them, but we still have access to the data and it is all contained under the same login, is it possible to merge the two tracking codes? so that we have seemless history. Also does anyone know if you can change the primary e-mail address (gmail account) to a corporate email account? Any help would be appreciated as we have researched both and from what we have found we can't merge the data and also we are stuck with the primary email address.
Reporting & Analytics | | loopylu030 -
Transfer Google Analytics data from one user to another?
Long story short, two weeks of analytics data are stored on a different profile from the rest of the year's data. Is there a way to export all data from a date range, and then import it to another account? Thanks for your help.
Reporting & Analytics | | AmericanOutlets0 -
Google Keyword Tool versus Google Analytics
Hi I'm trying to establish a methodology to best show the gap between potential and realised organic keyword traffic. To obtain potential keyword traffic I'm using the Google Adwords keyword tool to derive local monthly search volumes for exact keyword matches. To get the realised data I'm using Google Analytics. However, to get the I'm confused as to which is the best way of getting a comparable metric from Google Analytics (GA). I was using custom reports and the 'organic searches' metric. However, this provides different values to a standard report selecting non-paid search in the default advanced segments. What is the best report/metric in GA to use for both organic and paid search volumes that would be comparable to the Google Adwords keyword tool. Thanks Neil
Reporting & Analytics | | mccormackmorrison0 -
Data Overload! So . . . ..Confused . . .. !
Just when I think I'm starting to get it . . . info comes in that blows my mind. I'm using several tools at SeoMoz and others trying to keep track of my link building success, which has been largely me registering at related industries bulletin boards and forums and posting as well as making sure we are listed properly in any and all sites listing companies in our industry etc. I have to say I was a little frustrated with the results. I had seen SOME increase in the back links, but almost no move in the number of linking domains. NOW I just logged into googles webmaster tools . . . and their data says I have more than DOUBLE the number of linking domains as any other sites are suggesting. What's going on here? I can understand slight discrepancies due to when they crawl the data etc . .. but 22 linking domains compared to 9-10 from everyone else? What the heck?
Reporting & Analytics | | damon12120 -
Google Docs Paranoia
Recently, there has been a lot of great information on SEOmoz about using Google Apps, Docs, etc. However, I suffer from Google paranoia (the fear that Google can see what's going on in my Google products). Is this fear unreasonable? Should I be concerned about using Google Apps, docs, analytics, etc. for SEO data (including keyword position tracking, back link analysis, etc)?
Reporting & Analytics | | Gyi0