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 we’re 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 Analytics and Bounce Rates Query - Should I block access from foreign countries ?
-
Hi ,
When I look at my google analytics for my UK Website, I can see alot of visits come from outside the UK , i.e Brazil and USA. Both of which give me almost 100% bounce rates from people visiting from there.
I am wondering, if google looks at bounce rates with regards to ranking factors and should I therefore block access to my site from visitors outside the UK ?... Would this help increase my rankings ?
Given that we only serve uk customers, I cant see any benefit of allowing non uk customers the ability to see the site .
what does people think ?
thanks
pete
-
Yes it is (clear), and I'll review the Analytics documentation for more details. Really appreciate you taking the time to reply. ~Mike
-
Hi Mike,
I don't have access to a of pc now. From my memory you first create a filter, and then aply the filter to a new view. You should always keep one view in original state without any filters. Hope this is clear. Hope it is sufficiently clear.
rgds
Dirk
-
Thanks Dirk. That answered the issue I was uncertain about, which was whether blocking visitors from Analytics reports truly prevents them from hitting the site (even an error page), and apparently it doesn't so your answer makes perfect sense.
One more question: Does an Analytics filter automatically apply to all Analytics views/reports for that domain/site, or does a filter have to be assigned to the views I want it to affect (in this case, all of them)?
Thanks for the quick response!
Mike -
Hi Michael
The first thing you should do is to define the geography you are targeting in webmaster tools (If you have a generic tld).
if you would block visitors from Brazil on your site the bounce rate measured by analytics will go down. However, Google is not using your analytics data to measure the bounce rate (at least that is what they claim). As al these people get an error message when they try to visit your site,the real bounce-rate will increase rather than go down, making the situation even worse, you just would not be aware of it.
What you could do is set a custom filter in analytics, showing only the traffic from your target country and apply this filter to a new view. This gives you better insights on the behavior of your target audience.
rgds
Dirk
-
I've got a similar problem with nearly 50% of the traffic to many of my client's sites coming from Brazil. My clients are and will only ever be local, small town operations, so my questions are:
1. Why it's not a good idea to block those visits that are irrelevant to the traffic we want to measure.
2. Bounce rate is considered to play at least some role in the ranking algorithm, or at least I always thought so. If over 50% of my traffic is bouncing because it's bot driven, spam related, etc, shouldn't I be worried about the adverse affect on my bounce rate?Just trying to understand the rules to this game.
Thanks!
Mike -
Many thanks All
Peter
-
I'd like to add to the answers above.
First, I agree - do not block foreign visitors. There are many reasons for this, do not worry about their bounce rates.
Second, and the part I'm adding, is I suggest setting up a Filtered View in your Google Analytics that only tracks your target demographic, in your situation the UK visitors.
This Filtered View will allow you to see more accurate metrics for the people you're targeting and allow you to do a better analysis of your web analytics. Make sure to add that filtered view and not overwrite your unfiltered view, so if you ever do expand into the other geographic locations you can dig into their performance analytics as well.
-
Hi Pete,
Please don't block access to foreigners. You can set the geo-target in Google webmaster tools account, if you have not already done so. It is completely normal with country-specific websites getting traffic from all over the World. A small or probably 1 in a thousand foreign visits might come from UK people traveling abroad. So to conclude, its my honest opinion not to block access to foreigners even the bounce rates might be alarming. Its common and natural and search engine like Google know about this pretty well and there won't be any issue to your website from their end.
Best regards,
Devanur Rafi
-
Blocking access to your site for foreign visitors won't change anything for your "real" bounce rate. The measured bounce rate will decrease in Analytics, but these visitors will still bounce when they get to your website.
If you're using a generic domain extension - you can indicate in Webmastertools that you are targeting the local UK market (if you use a .uk extension this is automatically the case).
I wouldn't worry too much about this bounce rate - as long as the bounce rate (and time/visit - time on page) for your UK visitors is ok
rgds
Dirk
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
-
Using logical operators (AND / OR) in Google Analytics Goal Funnels
When setting up a Funnel within Google Analytics, is it possible to use logical operators (e.g. OR, AND) in the first (required) step of the funnel? For example, suppose I want to track users who visit page1.html AND page2.html before proceeding to the destination goal. I've entered two pages separated by the OR operator, and neither the "Verify this Goal" nor "Save" produces an error message - is it safe to assume that this is working as I intend? Thanks in advance!
Reporting & Analytics | | ahirai0 -
Fixing Bounce Rate between Domain and Subdomain
Currently, the way our site is set up, our clients generally visit our homepage and then login through a separate page that is a subdomain, or they can read our blog/support articles that are also on separate subdomains. From my understanding, this can be counted as a bounce, and I know this sorta of site structure isn't ideal, but with our current dev resources and dependencies, fixing this isn't going to happen overnight. Regardless, what would be the easiest way to implement this fix witihn the Google Analytics code? EX: If someone visits our site at X.com, and then wants to login at portal.X.com, I don't want to count that as a bounce. Any insight is appreciated! Thanks
Reporting & Analytics | | KathleenDC0 -
Google Analytics reporting traffic for 404 pages
Hi guys, Unique issue with google analytics reporting for one of our sites. GA is reporting sessions for 404 pages (landing pages, organic traffic) e.g. for this page: http://www.milkandlove.com.au/breastfeeding-dresses/index.php the page is currently a 404 page but GA (see screenshot) is reporting organic traffic (to the landing page). Does anyone know any reasons why this is happening? Cheers. http://www.milkandlove.com.au/breastfeeding-dresses/index.php GK0zDzj.jpg
Reporting & Analytics | | jayoliverwright2 -
Direct traffic spam on Google Analytics: how can you identify and filter it?
One of my smaller clients noticed a huge jump in direct traffic visits last month. The bounce rate was around 97% so I'm pretty certain that most of the traffic was illegitimate. I know how to filter out spam referrals and organic keywords in Google Analytics. However I'm not sure what to do about direct traffic spam. Are there recommendations for filtering this out? Can I identify spam IP addresses?
Reporting & Analytics | | RosemaryB0 -
Is it possible to use Google Tag Manager to pass a user’s text input into a form field to Google analytics?
Hey Everyone, I finally figured out how to use auto event tracking with Google Tag Manager, but didn't get the data I wanted. I want to see what users are typing into the search field on my site (the URL structure of my site isn't set up properly to use GA's built-in site search tracking). So, I set up the form submit event tracking in Google Tag Manager and used the following as my event tracking parameters: Category: Search Action: Search Value When I test and look in Google Analytics I just see: "search" and "search value." I wanted to see the text that I searched on my site. Not just the Action and Category of the event.... Is what I'm trying to do even possible? Do I need to set up a different event tracking parameter? Thanks everyone!
Reporting & Analytics | | DaveGuyMan0 -
Referral Traffic vs. Campaign Traffic in Google Analytics
I have two sites: a blog and an ecommerce site. The blog funnels people to the ecommerce site. In Analytics I'm seeing declines in referral traffic from the blog to the ecommerce site. During the same time I'm seeing an increase in campaign traffic to the ecommerce site, with most campaign traffic coming from the blog. I believe the increase in campaign traffic is largely a result of simply having installed more tracking links. This leads me to believe that the declines I'm seeing in referral traffic is simply a result of the increase in campaign traffic. In other words, what was once counted and reported as being referral traffic is now being counted and reported as campaign traffic. So my question is this: In Google Analytics is campaign traffic ALSO reported as referral traffic, or is campaign traffic reported separately and not duplicated in referral traffic reports? I'll provide a concrete example to make this more clear in case it isn't: Say site X sends 1000 visits each month to site Y. Say 50 of those visits come from a single link on X. If that link is changed so that campaign Z data info added (via the Google URL Builder), would you expect to then see 950 referral visits each month from site X to site Y plus 50 campaign visits to site Y via new campaign Z, or would you continue to see 1000 referral visits plus the new 50 campaign visits? Many thanks in advance to anyone that can shed some light on this.
Reporting & Analytics | | aaronprimal0 -
Google Analytics - Keywords (not set) or ( not provided) WHY???
In Analytics, most of my visitors are landing on my home page, but when trying to see wich keywords they use, most of them are: (not set) or ( not provided) See screencast: http://screencast.com/t/AKwPW76qLVsN Can you tell why? What is going on? Is there a way to solve this? Thank you, BigBlaze
Reporting & Analytics | | BigBlaze2050 -
How to remove unwanted dynamic parameters from a URL in Google Analytics
Hi, Would really appreciate some help with this. I have been experimenting with RegEx to achieve this but as I’ve never used it before am currently failing miserably. We have conversion pages i need to set goals for that are formatted as below: https://www.domain.co.uk//Application_Form/(S(ewhbqp5cki0mppuzukunkqno))/enterCardDetails.aspx I need to remove the (s(xxx)) section from the URL as rather than one pages i currently have thousands of unique URL's. What’s catching me out is that as it’s not a URL parameter I can’t discount and as half way through can’t just do head matches etc to /entercarddetails Help would be much appreciated. Thanks.
Reporting & Analytics | | Sarbs0