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
-
Not saying that is it 100% but that could be a major part of the issue. I would talk with the agency running the PPC and let them know the issue and have them pair the AdWords and Analytics accounts.
-
No, unfortunately not. We are an agency, however the client has hired someone else to run their PPC campaign so we don't have their campaign data linked to GA.
-
Hmmm, is your adwords account hooked up to your analytics account?
Can you click into the results going to the homepage and set that secondary dimension to country? That should be a possibility, a location of some kind.
-
Hi Kate, yes there are 1,374 sessions.
Half of them are going to the homepage "/"
Then there are around 350 going to promo single URL pages from PPC campaigns (so I understand the reason for those).
Around 100 are going to the "About Us" and "contact us" pages. Could these be ad extensions?
-
Is there much traffic coming in this way? The above would suggest the referral is from the google.co.uk homepage, is not passing the referral page, or is from something internal as /url isn't a thing. I've seen all of this before, so you are not going nuts, but I don't have a concise answer. I can tell you that your search traffic should be going to organic and this should be something like news, images, or another google property. Most likely it's traffic that is blocking referral info.
So I am hoping it's not much traffic. Where is the traffic going? Set that secondary dimension to landing page and let me know.
-
Hi Kate,
I found this forum stream - we're having a similar situation. I tried your suggestion. Our top referrer is Google.co.uk. When I add the secondary dimension "Full Referrer" It says:
1. "/" google.co.uk/
2. "(not set)" google.co.uk
3. "/url" google.co.uk/url
-
My answer was going to be much like Dirks. There are some Google properties that send traffic as referral, not as search. Can you take a look at the referral traffic from google.com and add "Full Referrer" as a Secondary Dimension and let us know what that is?
-
Thanks for help DC! I looked into both your suggestions, and our image search has dropped but not nearly enough to account for the drop in traffic and I looked into where most of the referral traffic from Google was coming from and it was the US.
Anyone else have any ideas on where the referral traffic from Google would have been coming from and why it dropped off the face of the earth with the new site when everything else has gone up?
Thank you!
-
In countries where the "old" image search is still used (like Germany) - it is counted as Referral traffic rather than search traffic (not sure why). You could check in Webmastertools what your % of image search is (and compare January & February)
You could also try to check the landing pages report for this referral traffic and compare this with the landingpages in Acquisition >Search Engine Optimisation > Landingpages with secondary dimension "Google Property"
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
-
Dark Traffic Mystery!
Hey everyone, My team and I have been digging into this problem and can't find an answer - and it turns out this has been an issue for over year. I'll try to explain the best I can, but let me know if you have any questions. My predecessor noticed a non-existent page URL getting traffic in GA. He had the web dev team create a page so he could see where the traffic is coming from. The page has every directive under the sun on it; noindex, nofollow, noarchive, nosnippet, noodp, noydir, noimageindex, notranslate All of the traffic is (direct) / (none). It gets about 300 visits per day. Avg. time on page is 15:40, bounce rate is 99.6% and it doesn't show up in the funnel. Previous page path is 92% entrance; 8% homepage. Geo is 92% US; then diversified across countries. Browser is predominately Chrome. OS is only Windows, and device is only desktop. I've run this page through a backlink checker, and we get nothing. I've run it through Screaming Frog and it has no internal links pointing to it. I've tried putting quotes around the URL and googling it and we get a few websites, but they're very low authority and it isn't likely that they're sending 300+ visits per day. Also, since all of the traffic is direct, I don't think it's coming from a backlink anyway. This has become a personal quest for several of us, as we really want to figure out where that traffic is coming from. Any thoughts? What am I missing? It's kind of driving me crazy because I can't figure out what I've missed, so if anyone figures this out and is coming to Pubcon in November, I'll buy you a beer!! 🙂
Reporting & Analytics | | rachelmeyer0 -
Google search console
Checking our links to our site on GSC and we've dropped from 515 to 324 over night - is this normal?
Reporting & Analytics | | RayflexGroup0 -
Referral Traffic Issue
I'm working on a site that has low traffic volumes due to its niche. That's fine but we are daily getting referral traffic from unrelated domains without a link. These visits are always 100% bounce which is impacting the overall click.through rate. The domains are not the same and different ones come through all the time, so it is difficult to keep on top of. Any ideas what could be going on here and an effective way of dealing with this?
Reporting & Analytics | | MickEdwards0 -
Google Tag Manager Classes
Does anyone know of classes or people who teach Google Tag Manager and how to use it effectively?
Reporting & Analytics | | JQC0 -
See which Google TLD organic traffic is coming from in GA
Hi all, I'm working with a client that is marketing to English speaking ex-pats in Thailand. I have a suspicion that many of these ex-pats are searching through google.com (or .co.uk) instead of google.co.th. In Google Analytics (or any other tracking tool), is there a way to see which country-specific Google domain organic searches are coming from? Thanks, Tim
Reporting & Analytics | | TimKelsey0 -
Google Analytics Custom Filter
Hello, Quick question, when I create a custom filter on a profile that already has data collected will that filter apply to already collected data or will the filter only apply from the day it was created? Am doing a custom exclude IP filter. Much thanks,
Reporting & Analytics | | Unity
Davinia0 -
Google Analytics Tracking Code Queries
Hello, I have taken on a new client who has Google Analytics installed. The tracking code is set to 'single domain'. Recently they added a mobile site using a sub-domain (m.website.com) which means that Google Analytics is not picking up this traffic. I want to revise the account so that I have a master account (raw data) and then profiles for the mobile site, main domain (www.website.com) and one other for a sub-domain that they are using. I am aware that there is mobile specific tracking code however I thought it would be easier (re conversions/goals/eCommerce tracking) to not use this and by changing the account to 'multiple domains' we could also get data for another sub-domain that they are using . My questions are: Am I right to want to use individual profiles over web properties. If not please explain why. When installing the tracking code (where the profile number is changing) I believe that I need to add that code with the changing profile number to the sub-domain sections. So my question is a) is that correct, and b) if I use a profile number on a sub-domain section will the master account still gather the data for the main URL as well as all sub-domains. If I change the master account from using 'single domain' tracking code to 'multiple domain' tracking code will this affect historical data? Will I lose the data? When changing from 'single domain' tracking to 'multiple domain' tracking does this affect eCommerce tracking? Or do we only need to be adding the additional lines of tracking code that allow sub-domains to be tracked? The web developers are using asynchronous code however half is in the and the other half is at the bottom of the source code. Given that traffic is being reported in the Google Analytics account should I have any concerns that the code is split? I have done a lot of reading but seem to be going around in circles, so your help is much appreciated! Thanks,
Reporting & Analytics | | Unity
Dinny0 -
My website traffic drop two times
Hi all, on our website www.watchalyzer.com I have unique content that we are writing especially for this online magazine. In last two months our traffic dropped two times. First time on October 20th and after 20 days traffic got back on November 10th. Second time traffic dropped on November 15th and it is still down Does somebody have idea what could be reason for this and how it can be fixed? thanks, Nikola
Reporting & Analytics | | GearyLSF0