Moz Q&A is closed.
After more than 13 years, and tens of thousands of questions, Moz Q&A closed on 12th December 2024. Whilst weâre not completely removing the content - many posts will still be possible to view - we have locked both new posts and new replies. More details here.
Google as referring domain
-
Hi all,
a colleague asked a question, which I could not answer (never even noticed this "problem")
When we are logged into our GA account and go the referring domains section, we find Google. I always thought that these visitors came via Google Image Search, but not all of them do.
Most of them come via "/imgres", but some come via "/" (always thought that "/" was the homepage?), "/url" and "//"
Maybe I am just stupid, but honestly I could not explain what these strings mean... or how these visitors landed on our site...
Can you help me???
-
Considering that (not provided) comprises 75% of my search queries, do you really think that Google will be transparent with this?
-
Hi Mike,
before I posted my question I searched on Google concerning this topic and read your quote.
It helps, but I would like to know the exact Google "source" these referrals come from...
/imgres = Google Image Search
/ = ?
// = ?
/url = ?
but thanks for your effort
-
This is from Google:
Not all referrals from Google.com domains come through organic search or AdWords ad listings. Referrals may come from a variety of sources, including Google Groups posts, base.google.com listings, or static pages on related Google sites. Such visits are tagged as [referral] instead of [organic] or [cpc].
cited: https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/1011811?hl=en
I 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 change domains in Google Analytics without losing the data
Hi there, We recently changed our domain from .COM to .NET so that all our subdomains from external pages matched. Right now in Google Console we have our new .NET website being tracked, but in GA we are still tracking .COM. It is also causing issues with MOZ crawling our site because of the .COM/.NET discrepancy. My question is what is the best way to change our Google Analytics from .COM to .NET without losing historical data and what considerations do we need to change before implementing this? Our team was concerned that just downloading the old data would be too vast and it we wouldn't be able to continue manipulating it dynamically in GA. Thanks!!
Reporting & Analytics | | cPanel-LLC.0 -
Attribution of conversions to payment gateway in Google Analytics
Hi all, We have been having a problem for a while now where most transactions are attributed to referrals from our payment gateway Sagepay. The issue started a couple of months ago, when we finally upgraded our website to https:// for logged in users and transactions. Before, when we were using http://, transactions were attributed to the correct channel. Even weirder, we upgraded 4 websites and only 2 of them have the issue now, the other two continue to attribute transactions correctly. I added Sagepay to the referral exclusion list which made no difference. Over the weekend, we upgraded to the global site tag and it seems to have improved somewhat, but yesterday 50% of transactions were still attributed to referral/sagepay. I am also seeing an odd issue, where for half of the transactions, the revenue and transaction are attributed to one channel, but the products (quantity) are attributed to another. One of the channels is always referral/sagepay and the other is the channel that the transaction should be attributed to. Has anyone seen this issue before? I'd appreciate any tips that might help us fix this issue. Thanks in advance!
Reporting & Analytics | | ViviCa10 -
Referral Traffic from Google
Hello, I have a question about my company's new website. I've worked in SEO and studied Google Analytics results for a few years now but have never really come across something like this. I started in this position in January of this year and when I started breaking down the traffic sources in Google Analytics, I noticed most of the traffic was coming from Google.com as a referral source. I had never seen Google.com as a referral source before so I looked into options for what it could be. It was not a paid ad and our organic traffic was coming through in Analytics, Before I could get any further, our new website was launched (we switched CRM's to WordPress) and the referral traffic from google went from 2,966 in January of 2015 to 22 in February 2015. for more comparison, in February of 2014, the referral traffic from Google was 2,496. I expected a drop when we switched CRM's but we correctly re-directed all pages and created a new sitemap and our organic traffic is up since the switch (not enough to cover drop in referral). I thought at first this had to do with our Google sellers account being de-activated when we made the switch, but I quickly fixed this over a month ago and no change. I'm wondering if anyone has ever seen Google.com come through as a referral source in Google Analytics and if they we're able to figure out what it actually was. This would be a great help! Thank you, Alex
Reporting & Analytics | | RASEO1 -
Google Analytics Real Time Not Working! :(
Hello Everyone, Today, the real time feature in my google analytics stopped working. I am able to see that traffic is visiting my site, but not in real time. The real time count is usually at 0. But, there are some instances where real time will come back online, but there will be only 1 unique visitor.  At any given time, our website usually has 20 visitors or so..Has anyone encountered this issue? Where should i start looking for fixes? What are the possible problems? Thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | KarlMarxTheBear0 -
Setting up Google Analytics for Subsites
I currently have one main .com site and am planning on launching geo-location subsites .co.uk, .com.au, .ru, etc... Traffic will flow between both sites and some of the content on the subsites will be duplicate and therefore include a canonical tag to the main site. I want to set up GA to capture who is going to the subsites and vice versa and correctly capture crossover traffic.  Any advice on implementing advanced analytics directly (or links to sources that will direct me the right direction for this project)
Reporting & Analytics | | theLotter0 -
What is s.ytimg.com in google analytics?
My clients GA reports 273 visits from s.ytimg.com. Â I go to the site, it doesn't exist. I googled it, there were some code with s.ytimg.com in it, but nothing I could understand. Anybody have an idea where this comes from?
Reporting & Analytics | | endlessrange0 -
No Social Sources in Google Analytics - what am I doing wrong?
Hello Everyone, I'm having a strange issue: I DO NOT have in my Google Analytics the "Social" tab under the Traffic Sources category. Look at the first image of this post: http://marketingland.com/google-analytics-social-reports-8138 How do you "get" that to show? Hope somebody has this issue and can help, Thanks a lot, Alex
Reporting & Analytics | | pwpaneuro0 -
AW Stats vs Google Analytics
Hey Moz Community, I am looking to get opinions on the best practice for analytics/traffic analysis. From experience I know that AW Stats reads high and Google Analytics reads low for traffic for reason in this article http://www.smartz.com/blog/2009/01/23/analytic-confusion-%E2%80%93-awstats-vs-google-analytics/ It drives me a little nuts how far off both are for some pages.  I have one article that shows 100 views (GA) and AW stats shows 5 times that number of views. Any suggestions or systems you recommend? Thanks
Reporting & Analytics | | johnshearer0