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.
Setting up Google Analytics default URL
-
If someone has set:
-
the default url in Google Analytics to a non-www address (http://mysite.com)
-
then placed the UA tracking script from that GA account within the CMS framework of the website...
-
... and then set the permanent 301 redirect in the htaccess file to redirect to the www address (http://www.mysite.com).
How less accurrate will my GA analytics measurements be considering the default url within GA is non-www and the permanent 301 redirect in htacess is to the www-address?
Anyone know how reliable GA reports are until the default url in GA analytics is changed to match what is the redirected url in htaccess file?
_Cindy
-
-
Got it, very helpful - thanks so much!
_Cindy
-
Hostname injection is when you add the hostname value to the beginning of the content URI. Instead of seeing just '/index.html' in the content URI reports, you would see 'www.mysite.com/index.html'. This is helpful when you are tracking across multiple subdomains and you need to tell the difference between files on your different subdomains. You would see the following, as an example:
www.mysite.com/index.html
blog.mysite.com/index.html
store.mysite.com/index.html3 different pages on different subdomains. Without adding the hostname, they would have rolled up into a single '/index.html' line and it would be difficult to know which subdomains they are from.
More info on setting up the filter can be found here:
-
OK, thank you.
If I understand correctly, the tracking code for a single site did the work of tracking visitors, and the 301 redirect didn't change the tracking results -- even though the "301 redirected address" was at one time different from the "GA default url."
If I may ask, what is a hostname injection? And if possible please explain a use case example where hostname injection is used.
_Cindy
-
The 'Default URL' field in a Property Settings screen will do a few different things:
- Prefill a setDomainName value for your tracking code if you select tracking for multiple subdomains or domains. I'm just noting in here, since none of what you described would be a cookie domain issue.
- The Default URL would be would be prepended to the content URI when you are viewing content reports and click the icon to view the page in a new window.
What I'll emphasize is that your Default URL value will have no effect on your data collection. It's simply not used in any data processing. There are many use cases for having an empty Default URL, for example, if you are doing a hostname injection into your content URIs and you don't need another hostname prepended when you attempt to open a content URI in a new window, like I described in the 2nd option.
Hope this helps.
-
Everything is consistent now - 301 redirect to www, default url in GA set to www.
Tracking code has remained the same within cms because the GA account's url was changed to go to www.
It is a matter of too many chefs in kitchen and no one had control of entire picture at one point.
My question really is... when there was inconsistency in web address from 301 redirect (www-address) and the GA default url (non-www), why was GA still receiving traffic?
And how much can one rely on older metrics when this inconsistency was in place?
_Cindy
-
Hi Cindy -
Why would you set the default URL to non-www, and then set GA to track the WWW address? I think you should send all your traffic and tracking to one or the other. That's the first step in cleaning this up.
I would suggest mapping everything to the www version as you have this set in for your 301. Sooner than later would be best to get accurate tracking started.
oh - and fix the tracking code - to include the WWW version and not the non-www. That also needs fixing.
Cheers, Rob
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
-
"index.htm" for all url's in google analytics
I don't have this issue with other wordpress websites, only this one website, and I don't know what's causing the issue: Google Analytics is adding an "index.htm" to every single page on the website. So it is tracking the pages, I see no errors - is it tracking the right page? When I click on the page link in a report, I naturally go to a "404 page not found" since the website address isn't "www.example.com/rewards/index.htm" - but instead the actual address would be:
Reporting & Analytics | | cceebar
"www.example.com/rewards/". I have navigated to View Settings in GA to insure "default page" is empty. Although adding anything else to this field does not effect the page url in analytics reports either. Could it be htaccess file - or a plugin effecting the htaccess file?_Cindy0 -
We have a client that wants to apply UTM URL tagging to track local organic traffic in Google Analytics. Is there any benefit in doing this?
One of our clients requested that we apply UTM URL tagging to better track organic traffic in Google Analytics. We found this to be an odd request because we are most familiar with UTM tracking for special campaigns (referral tracking, PPC, email tracking, etc). Is there any benefit of applying UTM tags to urls to analyze local organic traffic in Google Analytics? Are there any resources out there about this? Thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | RosemaryB0 -
How does Google Maps/G+ traffic show up in Analytics?
Hi Moz Community, I've been trying to figure out how traffic from Google Maps (and G+) shows up in Google Analytics and am struggling to find a good answer online. If someone finds a business through Google Maps and then clicks on the website in the Maps listing, does that show up as a referral from Google Maps? Our site shows virtually zero traffic from Google Maps even though we have a number of listing. Two related questions: if someone clicks through to a G+ page from a Maps result and then visits our website from the G+ page, does that show up in Analytics as a referral from G+? Is traffic from Google Maps or G+ ALSO counted as organic traffic? (Would it be possible to accidentally double-count a visit as both organic and a referral from Maps/G+? Thanks everybody!
Reporting & Analytics | | JohnGroves0 -
% Change - Google analytics - how to calculate?
Hi All,
Reporting & Analytics | | JohnPalmer
I have two dates with two different numbers I want to calculate the "% Change" like google analytics, The numbers of June 2015 - 127,931 sessions
The numbers of June 2014 - 90914 sessions please tell me what is the %Change. Best. J0 -
How does switching to HTTPS effect Google Analytics?
We are looking at making our site HTTPS. We have been using the same Google Analytics account for years and I like having the historical data. All of our pages will be the same, we are just going to redirect from the http to https. Does anything need to be done with Google Analytics? What about other addons such as Optimizely, Crazy Egg, or Share this?
Reporting & Analytics | | EcommerceSite0 -
Google Analytics shows most referrers as "Direct" -- What are some better tools?
Very often Google Analytics will show 50-90% of our referrers as (direct) which is not very helpful. Are there other tools out there that will provide a clearer breakdown of what other websites are sending us our traffic? Specifically, I want to be able to be able to tell who are the top traffic referrers to my top performing pages on my site for the last 30 days. (I want to be able to study this on a per-page basis.) Thanks in advance!
Reporting & Analytics | | Brand_Psychic0 -
No Social Sources in Google Analytics - what am I doing wrong?
Hello Everyone, I'm having a strange issue: I DO NOT have in my Google Analytics the "Social" tab under the Traffic Sources category. Look at the first image of this post: http://marketingland.com/google-analytics-social-reports-8138 How do you "get" that to show? Hope somebody has this issue and can help, Thanks a lot, Alex
Reporting & Analytics | | pwpaneuro0 -
Why are Seemingly Randomly Generated URLs Appearing as Errors in Google Webmaster Tools?
I've been confused by some URLs that are showing up as errors in our GWT account. They seem to just be randomly generated alphanumeric strings that Google is reporting as 404 errors. The pages do 404 because nothing ever existed there or was linked to. Here are some examples that are just off of our root domain: /JEzjLs2wBR0D6wILPy0RCkM/WFRnUK9JrDyRoVCnR8= /MevaBpcKoXnbHJpoTI5P42QPmQpjEPBlYffwY8Mc5I= /YAKM15iU846X/ymikGEPsdq 26PUoIYSwfb8 FBh34= I haven't been able to track down these character strings in any internet index or anywhere in our source code so I have no idea why Google is reporting them. We've been pretty vigilant lately about duplicate content and thin content issues and my concern is that there are an unspecified number of urls like this that Google thinks exist but don't really. Has anyone else seen GWT reporting errors like this for their site? Does anyone have any clue why Google would report them as errors?
Reporting & Analytics | | kimwetter0