Self-Reffering Traffic After upgrading to Universal Analytics
-
Backstory: We have always had an issue with self-referring traffic but in waiting for the UA upgrade we put it on the backburner for getting fixed.
We have now upgraded to UA and I was under the impression that GA would automatically exclude the domain associated with a property as a referral source. However this is not what I am seeing under my referral traffic source. With 10 websites having issues with this I need some help. Should I use the referral exclusion list? Also on a handful of our sites we have region specific URLs, I am also seeing these come in as self-referring traffic. I should also mention that about 85% of our sales are being attributed to the self-referring traffic.
Here are two sites for example sake: ZootSports.com and K2snowboarding.com
-
As for the event tracking...that can also cause self-referrals with the old code, yes?
-
Thank you all, I have read conflicting information on adding our domains to the exclusion list. I will do that for sure.
-
Melissa, are you also aware of the fact that all event tracking events are still fired via the old code for Classic Analytics?
-
Hi Melissa. You'll want to go into the Admin >> Property >> .js Tracking Info >> Referral Exclusion List and add in the domain(s) you want to exclude, such as zootsports.com, www.zootsports.com, k2snowboarding.com... and so on. If you take a look at your current referral traffic in GA Reports section you should find a fairly complete list. For example, you might have mobile domains as well, things like, m.k2.... etc.
-
Yes, you can place the domain in the exclusion list. Best practice is to try to identify the root cause (missing/incorrect tracking code, redirects, self referrals, subdomain & etc.). Good luck!
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
-
Direct traffic coming to URLs with /rss_feedIP#
I'm doing a site audit for an organization that has a bunch of really messy old Drupal sites. In looking at their traffic, I see that a majority of it is coming to landing pages that look like this: http://clientsdomain.com/rss_feed173.8.208.97 plus other IP addresses. The bounce rate is 100% and time on site is less than a second. It looks like something that an RSS feed tool might use, but I've never seen something like it before. It creates its own landing page, hits the site, then appears to bounce. This is making their Analytics data look a whole lot worse than the site is actually doing, since the bounce rate is 100% on all that fake traffic. I have some experience with Drupal, but I've never seen anything like this in Drupal or any other CMS. Has anyone out there ever experienced something like this, where direct traffic comes to an rss feed landing page and bounces immediately?
Reporting & Analytics | | newwhy0 -
Google Analytics Goals - Different Domain
Hi, We currently need to setup a goal that involves a different domain. Any guidance would be greatly appreciated. more info: the checkout process is redirected to a secure.domain Just let me know if I can provide any additional info that may helpful.
Reporting & Analytics | | opusvo0 -
Google Analytics - Sessions vs Views?
In Google Analytics under Audience Overview I want to visit total visits during any given period of time but instead it shows me sessions. Am I missing something? How do I switch from sessions to page visits?
Reporting & Analytics | | gohawks77902 -
Direct Traffic Spike
In February, I transferred an HTML site to a WordPress Platform. Since then, Direct traffic has spiked to nearly 400% since the WordPress transition. The Direct traffic spike took roughly 2 months before it started to kick in. Does anyone know what this could be attributed to?
Reporting & Analytics | | SteveZero120 -
How to see organic traffic only?
Im having trouble separating our organic traffic vs our PPC. When I go into Analytics>Traffic>Sources>Search>Organic, its giving me numbers that are not accurate. I believe whats happening is that its not able to distinguish our bing organic/ppc. Is using Webmaster tools Search Queries a more accurate way to determine organic search volume?
Reporting & Analytics | | DemiGR0 -
Google Analytics Content Experiments
Has anyone else found that Google Analytics Content Experiments seems to quite quickly favor the best performing variant in an experiment, and then show that variant many times more often than other/s - not split the traffic evenly? What is Google's thinking behind 'optimizing' during an experiment? It seems odd to me.
Reporting & Analytics | | David_ODonnell0 -
Analytics/Google Keyword comparison
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. However, 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. Also, I'm having problems getting my kids to eat their greens, any advice! 😉 Thanks Neil
Reporting & Analytics | | mccormackmorrison0 -
What's the best way to track moble traffic / sales from a subdomain in Google Analytics?
Hello, I've been trying to figure out the best way to track traffic and sales for a subdomain mobile site and would appreciate any feedback or guidance. I've set up an advanced segment but have found that I'm not able to source traffic since the segments get disabled when trying to view top content pages. I've also setup an additional sub-profile under the main domain profile in google analytics and have set up an advanced filter using the following guildelines http://code.google.com/apis/analytics/docs/tracking/gaTrackingSite.html In the Profile Settings page, click the Add Filter link. Choose Add New Filter and provide the filter a name. Choose Custom Filter and select Advanced on the Filter type settings. Under Advanced settings: FieldA should be set to Hostname FieldB should be set to Request URI Set the values for both Field A and Field B to (.*), which is an expression that captures all characters. Set the Output To --> Constructor option to Request URI and provide $A1$B1 as the value for that choice. I'm unsure if I've set up the profile / filter correctly, the traffic stats are different than the segment. The mobile profile is also tracking all ecommerce transactions instead of just mobile. Here's the code I have in place. we're using the Traditional code Thanks, Jamie
Reporting & Analytics | | marketing_zoovy.com0