Traffic drop after analytics troubles
-
Hi
For two weeks we had an artifical low bouncerate & high pageviews/visit in our Analytics reporting. The day we corrected the bug in Analytics - our bouncerate & pageviews/visit returned to normal levels - however we saw our search traffic go down massively(-50% in sessions).
The bug in the Analytics was caused by a second Analytics tag which was included in an external script which interfered with our own tag. The drop in traffic occurred just after the removal of the second script (which was only on our site for two weeks). We didn't touch our own tagging - and there were no technical changes on the site during this period, and there is no seasonal trend which could explain the sudden drop of traffic. We double checked our tagging - and the analytics tag is present & working on all the pages of our site.
On the organic traffic report from analytics you can clearly see the when the troubles with analytics started & ended (artificial low bounce rate) - and that the traffic drop starts right after the reporting issue ended. Webmastertools also indicated a lower number of views/clicks, but not to the massive 50% drop.
Is it possible that Google uses the measurements from Analytics for it's SERP's? Or should there be another reason, and where should we start looking? Appreciate your help!
-
To be honest - I knew the media agency did a change - so I thought the script was removed. Checking the source again shows that they still have the tracking tag - but with a modified tracking code - the modified script is here http://bit.ly/1qmtdWg - our site is http://bit.ly/1D0weRQ
I don't see interference on the measurements, but if I look at the Google Analytics reference, I'm not sure if this is the proper way to implement two tracking codes on a page, but I am in not really an expert in javascript or advanced analytics configuraton.
-
Pageviews will double and bounce rates will drop any time you have two tracking codes on a page (each pageview is seen as two, thus automatically making it not a bounce). Did you just remove the extra Analytics tag, or get rid of the whole script?
-
It was a script from the company which is selling the ads on the site (a medium sized media agency in Germany). It included a Google Analytics tag from another account - which was called during the loading of the page. Not sure if it was the script itself, or the way it was called, but there certainly was interference. I noticed using the Analytics tag assistant that the tag which was used was not ours, and when the page was loaded it first became green (our tag), than blue, and then green again (external tag).
Direct result of the script was that time on page dropped dramatically, but pageviews/visit doubled & bouncerate was cut in half.
-
It doesn't look like a coincidence to me either; I just don't think it is a direct correlation of the increased bounce rate and the decreased traffic. What was that external script that added the extra Analytics code?
-
The (search) traffic didn't increase when the problem with analytics started (of course the page views did) - as you can see in the graph. There is a drop the moment the stats (bounce rate & page views/visit) change in the negative sense.
Quite possible it's a coincidence, and that something else is causing the drop, but I don't really see what it could be.
-
I would think that if one could substantially increase the traffic of a site by artificially decreasing bounce/increasing pageviews using a second code, we'd see a lot of double-tagged sites out there...
-
Always possible - however we never did any linkbuilding, and we never used external SEO agencies that could have done it. The link profile seems pretty normal, no links from spammy domains like blogger, blogspot, or other fishy domains.
The profile is quite comparable with similar sites within our company, and we don't see any changes at this date on any of the other sites.
-
It's probably more correlated with the Penguin 3.0 refresh that have been rolling out. I'm guessing that it's just a coincidence w/the GA issue.
-
Thanks - will check the weblogs as well.
I know that the normally there should not be a link between Analytics & SERP's - but it's the second time that I notice that a glitch in Analytics is linked to a sudden drop in traffic so I am getting a bit suspicious about it (the previous time was on another site 2 years ago)
-
According to Matt Cutts, the use of GA doesn't hurt/help your site in rankings. Do you have access to your web logs? If so, do an analysis there and see if it replicates what you saw on GA.
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 is Indeed.com traffic appearing as organic in Google Analytics?
A large number of sessions in my client's Google Analytics account appear to come from medium: organic and source:Indeed. Since I'm focused on SEO for this project, I'd prefer that Indeed be treated as referral traffic. Any ideas for fixing this issue? Also, and I'm sure the answer is no, is there a way to fix the past data in Google Analytics that has already reported Indeed as an organic medium?
Reporting & Analytics | | Kevin_P0 -
Google Analytics & Google Sheets
Hi guys, I'm looking to use google analytics google sheets extension to pull data into a google sheet with metrics from other tools e.g. semrush, moz, etc. From my understanding with google analytics google sheet extension its designed to run reports and doesn't really allow you to add other metrics. Basically what i'm trying to do is this: https://www.useloom.com/share/c1e42bfa60bd46fca2b1120018969ce8 Any suggestions/advice on how to do this would be great. Cheers.
Reporting & Analytics | | jayoliverwright0 -
Is it possible to import data from an old Google Analytics profile to a new Google Analytics profile?
We have encountered a situation where a client's old SEO firm is refusing to grant us Admin access to our client's existing GA account. For security purposes (so the other SEO firm doesn't delete the existing GA profile) we have started a new Google Analytics profile. Again we do have access to the data in the old account. Is it possible to migrate this old data over (if we just have user access)? Thanks for the help
Reporting & Analytics | | RosemaryB0 -
Can you arrange Google Analytics source/medium traffic by percentage change?
I'm doing a year to year traffic audit for a client. I would like to analyze Google Analytics source/medium traffic by percent change. Is there a way to do this? Do I have to create a custom variable? 9BH70RO
Reporting & Analytics | | VanguardCommunications0 -
Moving data between Google Analytics Properties
Last summer we setup another Google Analytics property for us with Universal Analytics and have been running this alongside the old Google Analtyics property. is there a way of exporting all the old data from the old property into the new Universal Analytics property?
Reporting & Analytics | | ese0 -
Goal Totals in Google Analytics
How do I get a cumulative tally of all the goals reached in google analytics? I've been using the percentages currently, but I was wondering if there was an easier way. Thanks
Reporting & Analytics | | OOMDODigital0 -
Google Analytics
Is there any way around being able to set up 20 goals in Analytics? What if one of my clients want to set up 10 pages with separate actions to track on each page. Will then each actions count as a separate goal? If this is the case, how could I work around creating more than 20 goals? Would I have to look into hiring/buying a third party or separate software? Your help is greatly appreciated.
Reporting & Analytics | | flcity150 -
Analytics Showed Steady Growth Until Now?
Last 10 weeks have seen steady growth in visitors and pages viewed, yet this week it has dropped a bit from last week (virtually stagnant). Is our user base simply hitting a plateau, or is there another reason?
Reporting & Analytics | | wlefevre0