How Can a Page Have More Unique Pageviews than Total Pageviews?
-
The question and the attached image say it all... how is this possible?
-
tool: the asynchronous tracking code from Google Analytics
-
It seems very improbable, but it's possible (not sure how I'd check for incognito visitors... I'll try to figure this out sometime in the next few weeks).
I tell you what - this specific issue itself is confounding, but the bigger problem is the small but evolving perception that all of the analytics data behind my advice is untrustworthy (a client's growing suspicion that "if this GA data is wrong, then all GA data must be wrong; and Glenn's advice, being based on this data, is invalid". I can just show all the new rankings we get for proof in the pudding, but I just personally want to figure this out theoretically to eliminate any remaining buried seeds of insecurity.... lol!
-
I've passed this one around internally for ideas too. Is this in a subject area where many people might be visiting in incognito mode? It is a bit of a head scratcher!
-
The client never noticed, but is about to on an update report (see attached).
Still happening, still baffling... really hoping someone can help me figure this out... several dozen people I've discussed this with don't believe me, see this, then are baffled too --
-
I haven't seen this before myself, and just now saw this question. What happens if you set the date period to less than a month? Do the numbers look better then? What about if you show things by day instead of week -- is there a day that is out of whack?
Did the client ever notice this and ask?
-
Thanks - that makes a lot of sense, holycap.
Yup - This report is not for a custom segment, and is beyond a month.
Right again, this image is for an infrequently visited page -- so that low volume could lead to bigger margins of error. I would expect those margins of error to match, though, for pageviews and unique pageviews - wouldn't you? Why would such similar metrics have such varying margins of error?
-
Mad props for replying --
This screenshot is from Google Analytics. My server logs, and other analytics software (clicky) don't report the same discrepancy. Since the owners of this website only check GA, I just wanted to figure this out so I can answer their question if they ever ask).
The code is installed correctly. It hurt a little to even consider that theory - though I did review the site firsthand and check....thanks for keeping me humble, tho! This site's bounce rate is about 12%, so I'm pretty sure it's not because of the visitor pressing the backbutton before the page loads (pageload lasts 2 seconds on average, and 95%+ of visitors spend over 10 seconds).
Still unresolved.... and this question is one of the few that seems to stick with me, since this one bizarre example makes all of GA seem less trustworthy. Lemme know if any other ideas spring up ---- Until then, I'll be like the attached images.
Thanks again --hands_twiddling_thumbs_lg_clr.gif image11.gif f923589989ee7d2c47f9106d3387db29b9b2278.gif
-
Another thing he could consider is the fact that this is an Analytic pull of a date range that looks to be beyond a month, so if this is a custom segment, it might be generating a fast access report that's known to be inaccurate in its ballpark estimate at times, especially when numbers are this low, the margin of error can be much bigger.
-
Magic. Obviously.
I can't give you a definite answer but I imagine what is happening is that the data points are being pulled two different ways. Perhaps unique pageviews are being pulled from requests for a URL but total pageviews are being pulled from tracking code and the code isn't loading because the code is put in wrong or the user hits the browser's back button before the page loads.
Which tool are you using?
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
-
What is the most effective way of selecting a top keyword per page on a site?
We are creating fresh content for outdated sites and I need to identify the most significant keyword per page for the content developers, What is the best way to do this?
Reporting & Analytics | | Sable_Group0 -
Duplicate Title Errors on Product Category Pages - The best practice?
I'm getting quite a few 'Duplicate Title Error' on category pages which span over 2 - 3 pages. E.g. http://www.partwell.com/cutting-punches http://www.partwell.com/cutting-punches?page=1 http://www.partwell.com/cutting-punches?page=2 http://www.partwell.com/cutting-punches?page=3 All 4 pages currently have the same title... <title>Steel Cutting Punches</title> I was thinking of adding Page Numbers to the title of each corresponding page, thus making them all unique and clearing the Duplicate Page Title errors. E.g. <title>Steel Cutting Punches</title> <title>Steel Cutting Punches | Page 1 of 3</title> <title>Steel Cutting Punches | Page 2 of 3</title> <title>Steel Cutting Punches | Page 3 of 3</title> Is this the best way to go around it? Or is there another way that I'm not thinking of? Would I need to use the rel=canonical tag to show that the original page is the one I want to be found? Thanks
Reporting & Analytics | | bricktech0 -
2 days in the past week Google has crawled 10x the average pages crawled per day. What does this mean?
For the past 3 months my site www.dlawlesshardware.com has had an average of about 400 pages crawled per day by google. We have just over 6,000 indexed pages. However, twice in the last week, Google crawled an enormous percentage of my site. After averaging 400 pages crawled for the last 3 months, the last 4 days of crawl stats say the following. 2/1 - 4,373 pages crawled 2/2 - 367 pages crawled 2/3 - 4,777 pages crawled 2/4 - 437 pages crawled What is the deal with these enormous spike in pages crawled per day? Of course, there are also corresponding spikes in kilobytes downloaded per day. Essentially, Google averages crawling about 6% of my site a day. But twice in the last week, Google decided to crawl just under 80% of my site. Has this happened to anyone else? Any ideas? I have literally no idea what this means and I haven't found anyone else with the same problem. Only people complaining about massive DROPS in pages crawled per day. Here is a screenshot from Webmaster Tools: http://imgur.com/kpnQ8EP The drop in time spent downloading a page corresponded exactly to an improvement in our CSS. So that probably doesn't need to be considered, although I'm up for any theories from anyone about anything.
Reporting & Analytics | | dellcos0 -
How can I see keyword rankings past 50?
The rankings in the campaigns appear to be limited to tracking terms in the top 50. is there a way to view past that? I understand that for the most part no one is ever going to see past that so 50+ might as well be 5000. But a client has requested for a handful of key terms. If this is not possible, can someone recommend another tool I might use? Thank you! Kevin
Reporting & Analytics | | yandl0 -
Google.co.uk (The Web or Pages From UK) Query?
Hi, Google.co.uk is ambiguous at best, it is geo targeted for the UK, however, by default all results incorporate "The Web" meaning outside the UK. If a user wishes to filter to "Pages From UK" then they have to click that specifically. Now my clients regularly ask me whether the traffic they are getting is from Google.co.uk (The Web) or Google.co.uk (Pages from UK) In analytics it combines these two as single source = Google.co.uk without any further breakdown, is there a way to figure this out. If I can split the figures then I can run necessary additional comparisons etc. Regards Ausaf
Reporting & Analytics | | conversiontactics0 -
Our SEO is garbage. can someone answer a few questions for me?
I've seen our SEO drop to more or less the bottom of the barrel, and I don't have any answers yet as to why. SEOMoz is running it's crawl currently, and I have a few errors about duplicate titles and content, so I know I have some work cut out for me. But, why the sudden drop? The only change I made at the time was a change to our URL structure, but all links were 301'd to their new location. Does this still hurt SEO that terribly? Also, our robots.txt file is getting indexed and showing up as the first result at times. Very embarrassing. It's doing better than our other pages. 😞 I don't get what's happening here. Yrzu3,fkbYu
Reporting & Analytics | | stagl0 -
How Can I Record .zip Traffic in Google Analytics
The company I am with shows traffic coming in to .zip files in Google Analytics. The traffic being recorded stopped a while back, but I know people are still downloading/visiting these .zip ULRs. I'm not sure how they were recording/tracking the .zip URLs (in Analytics) before, but I'd like to track them once again. Does anyone know how to do this? Thanks
Reporting & Analytics | | poolguy0 -
How do I find out how well a page converts in Analytics
Hello All, I am looking to find out how well a page converts in Analytics. A simple request you would thing, but no! First off let me list what I don't want to know: I don't want to know the conversion rate of a product I don't want to know the conversion rate based on the landing page What I want to know is how many people click to add the product to their basket on a particular page (which I understand is not strictly the conversion rate, but whatever). So the ways I have tried unsuccessfully are: The Analytics overlay (the in page Analytics thing) - this doesn't work because the "Add to Basket" button is not a link, it is an input. The Navigation Summary - this doesn't work because most of the time the /shopping_cart.php URL doesn't come up in the short list, and if you search for the URL in the search box beneath the percentages get all skewed. The most obvious solution would be Event tracking but I can't get that implemented in the short term. So does anyone have the answer to this most curious of conundrums? Thanking you in advance, Rich
Reporting & Analytics | | tonyatfat0