Are organic search visitors always seen as organic in origin, even if their return to the site is direct?
-
Many of our conversions occur in a customers second visit to the site. Often, a customer will arrive at our site, submit a finance application, leave, and return at a later date to checkout.
We are interested in tracking how many of our checkouts come from customers who originally found our site through an organic search result.
If a customer enters the site through organic search, leaves, and returns later through an email link or directly entering our URL, will G analytics show that customer as direct or organic origin?
Cheers,
Ben
-
I think what you're really looking to do is use multi touch funnels and attribution. And the metric you are trying to measure is called "first touch" - meaning the source of the first visit gets the credit.
If your analytics is set up for goals and/or ecommerce tracking which is all pretty easy to do, you can see all of the default multi touch reports in GA.
Here's their intro guide and guide on setting it up.
-Dan
-
Yes, according to Google Analytics IQ curriculum (see https://www.google.com/analytics/iq.html, lesson 3 about traffic sources), direct traffic will not override previous campaign sources - at least for conversion attribution.
You could also have a look at the reports "Assisted conversions" + "Top Conversion paths" in the Conversions > Multi-channel Funnels section in Google Analytics to get more information.
Hope this helps!
-
Yes, GA will treat like this if they don't have active session. If that visitor is working same session then it will not overwrite organic. It will not increase your organic search either. It will only show the increment in your page views.
I don't think there is any service available to track organic traffic over multiple days/sessions.
-
I've done a little more reading and found that <direct>will never overwrite <organic>(as long as the cookie is active, <6 months) as discussed here: http://www.hmtweb.com/marketing-blog/google-analytics-referring-sources-experiment/</organic></direct>
Correct?
-
Is that only when they do not have an active session? I believe direct will never overwrite organic origin when the session is active?
Are there any services available to track organic traffic over multiple days/sessions?
-
G Anlytics will count them direct visitor and also it will count under returning visitors.
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
-
Why am i seeing google.inc in analytics as direct traffic? Bug?
Recently i have seen two clients sites see a spike in direct traffic coming from google.inc. Is this a bot/bug which i should filter out. Just a bit confused why google.inc has visited our clients site 676 times! Any insight would be great.
Reporting & Analytics | | BlueWren1 -
Best to Leave Toxic Links or Remove/Disovow on Site with Low Number of Linking Domains
Our site has only 87 referring domains (with at least 7,100 incoming links). LinkDetox has identified 29% of our back links as being toxic and 14% as being questionable. Virtually all of these links derive from spammy sites. We never received a manual penalty, but ever since the first Penguin penalty in 2012 our search volume and ranking has dropped with some uneven recover in the last 3 years. By removing/disavowing toxic links are we risking that over optimized link text will be removed and that ranking will suffer as a result? Are we potentially shooting ourselves in the foot? Would we be better to spend a few months building quality links from reputable domains before removing disavowing bad links? Or toxic links (as defined by LinkDetox) so bad that it should be a priority to remove them immediately before taking any other step? Thanks, Alan
Reporting & Analytics | | Kingalan10 -
I've seen 4webmasters.org/default.apsx as a referrer, but now it's showing as top page visited
I've seen 4webmasters.org/default.apsx as a referrer, but now it's showing as top page visited. How is this happening and how do I fix it?
Reporting & Analytics | | Stamats0 -
Tracking Clicks on a Global Header Across Multiple Sites
Hey All, A particular client has multiple websites and we're planning on implementing a global header across 15+ sites. I've been looking for a way to track the clicks on this global header across all sites (that is that they are summed up), what's the best way to go about this if I am using Google Analytics (I know Adobe site catalyst could do this no problem with some advanced tweaking), any ideas? I could do the general click tracking route and tag every link but that will only help me if I do that for each site (that being said, if the global header for all sites pulls from a single HTML, then tagging it would technically count all the clicks from all the sites, the only caveat being that I'd have to pick which Google analytics profile I'd want to track the header with). Thoughts? Thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | EvansHunt0 -
Viewing image search data in Analytics?
How do you view image search data in Google analytics? Do you need to apply tracking or can you drill down into the default data? Thanks.
Reporting & Analytics | | Bondara0 -
Any advice for better results for local search in the UK ?
Hi there, I have tried the tools here, and they are BRILLIANT but maybe to much for me. I just wondered if anyone in the UK had time to give me some advice. A lot of my customers are small businesses (mainly trades, like plumbers, builders etc etc), and I am trying to find best practices for getting them more quality traffic amidst a lot of competition. One customer I am working with currently has 50+ competitiors for his small plumbing business that are within 5 miles of him and have an effective web prescence. In those circumstances (take it as read that I have killed myself creating quality content that I am proud of for this client), does anyone have any killer advice for me that could make my sites more effective ? If anyone does have the time I am more than willing to PM the URL I am working with at the moment. Thanks for your time..
Reporting & Analytics | | nicklemonpromotions0 -
Search Traffic Drops Before It Improves?
I'm working on a site with tons of great, useful content....the owners of the site implemented a new site layout and design (complete overhaul) and they were lacking basics such as meta descriptions, 301 redirects, and, shockingly, they had the same Title tag for every single page on a site with thousands of unique how-to articles. Unsurprisingly their traffic dropped by about 300%. They generate most of their traffic from people learning how to build stairs, how to install crown molding, and other related matters. Beginning last Thursday I've been performing basic on-site SEO, things like having unique titles for each page and similar tasks. The week from Thursday when I began until yesterday (Wednesday), Google traffic dropped -29.73% - 17,715 vs 25,210 I believe this is a normal part of the "Google Shuffle" -- does anyone have a Matt Cutts link or similar proof that this is a normal part of the process?
Reporting & Analytics | | wattssw0 -
Is IP tracking of visitor allowed?
Hi, Google Analytics does not provide IP addresss of the visitors. What if i develop some in-house tracking mechanism to do so? Is it allowed or will Google penalize me if it comes to know about it? Thanks
Reporting & Analytics | | IM_Learner0