Google Analytics Stopped Tracking Visits - NEED HELP!
-
Hi Moz Community,
I have about 10 sites, static HTML sites and WordPress sites, which ALL stopped tracking Google Analytics on August 2nd. They go to a flat-line! Dead! No data!
Has anyone else experienced this either currently or before? I have confirmed all code is correct as it's been tracking these sites for years. One site gets 5,000+ visits a month and they are sitting at only 1,500 now and will be a fun conversation to have with the client.
If all code is correct, what should I do? How do I overcome this without having to re-create another account/tracking ID?
Never dealt with something like this before and there is not much on the web or in other forums. Would appreciate any help or advice or tips! - Patrick
-
Great to hear that it's fixed.
We call that master view a Raw account, and label the rest as Filtered (Filter Type). We use Filtered (Primary) as the main account that we look at day to day. So yes - definitely set those master accounts up.
-
Hi Kane,
Actually, that is exactly what happened. One of our developers added an | exclusion at the end of their sole Spam Bot Filter and it in turn, shut down collection of data. So, I worked with the Google Adwords support team and they determined that was the cause.
We removed it, I picked up some new, great pointers from them, and all are back up and running. They advised to always have a Master Analytics View which collects ALL data (even the spammers), then another called Filtered View, which eliminates the spammers and then a Test View to play with new filters.
It is something so simple to implement and now I know moving forward with all new clients/accounts and have been spending time updating all current accounts to have these 3 views in Analytics.
- Patrick
-
Hey Patrick,
I have a good guess as to the problem. Has anyone installed Bot Filters on these accounts? If someone installed a bunch of bot filters incorrectly (for example a hostname exclusion instead of a hostname inclusion) that would cause tracking to disappear despite proper on-site installation.
August 2nd was the day that Moz published a blog post on this exact topic, so that in particular makes this my best guess.
If you want to post screenshots of the filters on these account I'm happy to glance at them.
-
Hi Alick,
Correct, none of the affected 14 sites were or have been penalized by Google for any of their reasons (malware, spammy links, etc). Actually most are just your standard brochure type informational website and only 2 are actively doing any SEO/PPC campaigns.
We checked Real Time and saw they were not working. We also confirmed the notices in GA for the tracking code not working any more. I got that tip from you, so thank you very much for that.
I have re-entered all the GA codes and/or plugins for the WP sites and will monitor more today and over the weekend. It was a completely random event which doesn't make any sense.
- Patrick
-
Hi Dirk,
Thanks for the tip on installing the Tag Assistant. I have done that now and will toy around with it today/this weekend. I confirmed that all the tracking codes were properly set up, however, in the GA profiles, you visit > Admin > Tracking Info > Tracking Code > and I saw notices from each of the 14 affected sites that the code wasn't being recognized.
I believe I have corrected the issue, but still doesn't explain why for years there was no issues, no hosting changes, no WP changes (as it would've affected so many more sites, and not just mine or my clients, but 1,000's around the world from a plugin update or something), not isolated to just WP sites as I had HTML sites affected.
I will be monitoring and checking these sites and all the others just in case. Never seen anything like this before. Thanks for your reply!
- Patrick
-
Thanks for the reply, David.
What is weird is of the 80+ accounts I can see and manage, 14 in total were affected once I got through checking all site profiles. On Aug 2nd, the 14 sites go to zero.
The odd part is some are WordPress sites and 5 are static HTML sites. Some are hosted in GoDaddy. Some are not. Some sites I haven't even logged into for months (especially the HTML sites). They track everything up to Aug 1st as normal.
- I checked all front end source code for the GA code = confirmed positive
- I checked for duplicate GA code = confirmed negative
- I checked the WP sites for combating GA plugins = confirmed negative (some were using Google Analyticator and some just the normal Google Analytics and some using Yoast or All In One SEO, but none of them had 2 GA plugins)
- I checked the Filters as some have Filters, others don't. The one's that have the Filters are using the same ones to block referral spam as my 3 company sites, and pretty much all of the others I manage, so it can't be Filters
- I checked for spacing in the code as suggested above = confirmed negative
What I've had to do is remove whatever plugin they were using. Then installed another and authenticated. I will know by morning if that worked as the "Tracking Code" is not showing errors and is showing that is is actively tracking data. The Real Time is as well, so I assume my trick worked, but want to make sure it remains.
- Patrick
-
It seems extremely weird that ALL of your sites have stopped recording and not just the odd one!
We often get this issue with our clients as they feel the need to go into their Wordpress sites and add the Analytics code them selves. Often causing it to duplicate the code and stop Analytics recording the data properly!
First, I would 'view source' of the web pages and check that their is only one set of Analytics code on the site
Then check to see if there are any filters on the Analytics account that is causing it to block the dataNot convinced that they will solve your issue as for them to affect multiple sites all at once is weird, and you may have already checked the above! But it's worth a shot.
-
On top of what Alick already mentioned you could also install the Chrome Tag Assistant plugin to double check that your code is really sending data - https://chrome.google.com/webstore/detail/tag-assistant-by-google/kejbdjndbnbjgmefkgdddjlbokphdefk
When your traffic drops to zero is almost certain that there is an issue with the tracking code.
rgds
Dirk
-
Hi Patric,
I presume your site is not penalized by Google.
There are a few ways you can check to see if the Google Analytics tracking code on your website is working.
- Check your Real-Time reports - If you see data in these reports, it means that your tracking code is currently collecting data.
- Check the Tracking Status in your property - Which tells you if your tracking code is working or not.
- Please also check analytics code for any extra space.
Thanks
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 Analytics Not Properly Attributing Goals
My GA has been working fine for years and is now suddenly attributing 100% of my goals/conversions to a "referral" source. In this case "crm.zoho.com". (see attached url) Our contact form is a zoho CRM form. When prospect fills it out online, it dumps them to a thank-you page and the conversion is counted. That all works just fine, but it is not attributing the conversion to Organic or PPC or Direct as it was a month or so ago. I'm not sure if this may be the cause, but I was cleaning up GA about a month ago, deleting some filters I didn't think I needed any more. Thank you for your help. 9CRUx
Reporting & Analytics | | sanctuary2420 -
How To Stop Google's "Fetch & Render" From Showing Up In Google Analytics
Hi all, Within Google's "Fetch & Render" (found in Google Search Console) is the ability to index certain pages from my website on-demand. Unfortunately, every time I ask Google to index a page, it registers as a bounce in Google Analytics. Also, if it means anything, my website (www.knowtro.com) is a single-page application, functioning similarly to Google. If you guys know of any solution to this problem, please help! I originally thought that Google would know to block its own Fetch & Render crawler from Google Analytics but that doesn't seem to be the case. Thanks, Austin
Reporting & Analytics | | A_Krauss0 -
Is Google doing anything about the spam referrer plague in Google Analytics?
My client manages 15+ websites and we have observed the spam referrer issue has gotten steadily worse and worse in the last few months. I took the time to weed out the worst offenders via traffic filters but our referral traffic source garden was quickly full of weeds again a few weeks later. Does anybody know what the Google Analytics development team is doing to combat the spam referrer issue? I find it quite amazing that Google goes through the asinine effort to block out organic keyword data ("not found" & "not provided) but they don't seem to care about blacklisting/filtering spam referrers. RHnE6Wx
Reporting & Analytics | | RosemaryB3 -
Google Shopping tracking as organic traffic - help!
Hey guys, I have an eCommerce client who sometimes runs Google PLA and Google Shopping campaigns. However, we don't run his AdWords for him, just do his SEO. At the moment, the Shopping campaigns track as organic traffic within Analytics. And I can't see any way to change this! It's so infuriating. How do I change this? Thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | jasarrow0 -
Help w/ Google Event tracking w/ new Universal analytics.js
I want to implement Google event tracking after my visitors complete an estimate form. The form provides them an approximate range of costs based on their widget and widget amount. I have the php coding done, but I don't know JS and I need to send an event upon completion of the estimate form. However, all of Google's examples are button click events. How do I send the event upon completing a form if there is no separate landing page? If I have my Google analytics code on the page as well, would simply adding the following the completed estimate code work?
Reporting & Analytics | | TheDude0 -
Tag Manager & Universal Analytics Code - Do you need both?
Hi Mozzers I've created a container for a domain in Google Tag Manager. Within that container I've created a tag for universal analytics with track type "Page view" and the firing rule "all pages". Can I then replace the Universal Analytics code with the tag manager code? Would it still track all the normal data in Google Analytics? There are no events setup up yet so that's not a concern but there are goals setup tracking which are triggered by a page view. Would they be affected? Thanks Anthony
Reporting & Analytics | | Tone_Agency1 -
Google Analytics Code
We have a quick question about our Google Analytics code: We recently updated to a re-marketing Analytics code, and some of our traffic numbers seem to be off by a bit. I used the Google Tag Assistant Chrome Extension today, and noticed that it's finding our old Analytics code on our pages, but it's coming up as an error due to "no HTTP Response". I am attempting to remove this code from the website, but it is nowhere to be found in the HTML coding. Only the current one is there. So I'm wondering if this second Analytics code is effecting our traffic and reporting, even if the code is currently non-functional? and if it is, how could I go about removing it if it's not currently in our HTML? Thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | PlanetDISH0 -
Google Images referral visits fell off a cliff
As of 28-Jan, referral traffic from Google images (/imgres) to my domain has pretty much vaporized. Visits are down 85%. It's actually not a disaster because most of those visits were from poorly optimized alt tags that were resulting in low quality visits. The interesting thing is that visit duration is up 80% during the same period. So I'm asking this question out of curiosity more than anything. Is this likely an algorithm tweak? I can't think of any major changes on my end. There's only one other data point to mention but I don't see how they'd be connected. I did two PRWEB releases on 29-Jan and 30-Jan that resulted in a few hundred new no-follow links back to my site. 22b7k2.png
Reporting & Analytics | | JonDiPietro0