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.
Did Analytics change the way to handle Google images searches on Dec 12?
-
Dear all,
One of the sites I'm monitoring receives a lot of traffic from image searches or images that appear in universal search results.
On Dec 12th, 2015, the bounce rate for these sessions went from around 30% the day before to around 87%. See screen shot below.
Did anybody notice similar bounces in the bounce rate? Did Google change something in the way that image search is handled?
Looking forward to your ideas!
-
Interesting. At this point, you have a lot more data on the subject than I do. I know the changes to how Google cached/displayed images caused a lot of headaches for enteprise SEOs in the US, but I don't know much about that situation with Google.fr. Your explanation seems plausible, given the data.
If your explanation is true, I'm not sure what you can do about it. These referrals are just inaccurate, and that bounce rate is meaningless. As you said, the design basically makes the bounce inevitable.
I would be reluctant to remove it completely, because you might want to be able to track any changes Google makes to how this is handled, but I would certainly remove it from your overall metrics somehow. You and/or your team shouldn't be judged negatively on this bounce rate.
-
I spend some time observing GA's Real Time reports and here is what I found.
I first noticed that also on Dec 12th, the source "images.google / organic" makes its appearance in GA.
If you use google.com (or probably all other versions of Google that use the same interface), GA doesn't log a visit till one clicks on either the enlarged image or the "Visit page" button. (screenshot with French flag attached, does this interface have a specific name?) The visit is logged as "google / organic", not "images.google / organic".
But if you use google.fr (or probably all other versions of Google that use the same interface, I confirmed with google.de), GA logs a visit even if you haven't really left Google, when the image is shown hovering above its host page. The source is "images.google.fr / referral" at this point.
But when you then click on the cross to close the image or on the "Site Web pour cette image" link in the side bar, hence if you really go to the site hosting the image, the source information is replaced by "images.google / organic". (screenshot with map of France attached)
So it seems quite logical that
a) the bounce rate for the source "images.google.fr / referral" is close to 100% and that
b) the source "images.google / organic" appeares at the same timeThis raises three questions for me
1. How was the behaviour before Dec 12th?
2. Wouldn't it be appropriate now to exclude entirely trafic provided by the source "images.google.fr / referral" (as well as images.google.de etc.), as this is only an enlargement in Google's search results and not a visit of the site?
3. How is it possible that the bounce rate of "images.google.fr / referral" is not 100%? Why do certain sessions still get multiple page views?I also looked into what you had suggested, if only certain images or phrases had the high bounce rates.
The answer is that for the traffic logged as referral traffic, there is no keyword data. But if I look at the landing pages, the general rule is a bounce rate between 75 and 95% for "images.google.fr / referral". The landing pages with lower bounce rates, simply have very few sessions, so that's probably just a coincidence. I noticed though that there are quite a few pages that are redirects for images that don't exist anymore that have a low bounce rate or even bounce rate 0%
How do you think, we should deal with these new settings now?
2016-01-25_images%2Bafter%2Bclicke%2Bon%2Bimage.jpg 2016-01-26_google-fr%2Bafter%2Bclick%2Bon%2Bimage%2Bin%2Bwidget%2Bfrance.jpg
-
I'm sorry - I misread the bounce rate part. So, image search is definitely driving clicks, but your bounce rates in GA skyrocketed - gotta. Unfortunately, I'm not aware of anything on the Google side that would blow up bounce rates once someone got to your site.
Have you checked out what that actual experience flow looks like right now? First thing I'd do is try a couple of your most popular image searches and make sure nothing obvious is acting up.
Do the bounces seem clustered around any particular images or phrases, or are they across everything?
-
Hello Dr. Pete,
Thank you for stepping in!
Did you see similar changes in bounce rates at the time?
Also, I am a bit confused that you speak of "image impressions" while I referred to bounce rates. My understanding was that if Analytics loggs a session with for example referring site / images.google.fr as source, it means that the user is actually visiting the site, in other words that the user has clicked on the "Consulter la page / Go to the page" button. Am I wrong?
Just to avoid misunderstandings: I am not referring to the number of sessions with "referring site / images.google.fr" as source, but to what Analytics shows as bounce rates. The number of sessions even has increased for my particular site.
Thanks for your help!
-
Here in the US, Google changed image search a few months back and started caching everything, which killed image impressions overnight. I thought that roll-out was international, but I'm not experienced enough with vertical search to know for sure. Did that potentially just hit France?
-
No sorry, I don't have a French one to check.
-
Thanks Martijn,
Did you check on a single site or on multiple site.
Is this maybe a francophone thing? In a Francophone forum, I found at least one other webmaster who reported the same observation
http://forum.webrankinfo.com/google-images-hausse-soudaine-taux-rebond-t185121.htmlDo you have a .fr site that you could check?
Best wishes
Frank
-
Hi Frank,
No we don't see it in our dataset, I've checked around 30k sessions and the bounce rate definitely isn't seeing changes like what you're seeing.
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
-
How to change domains in Google Analytics without losing the data
Hi there, We recently changed our domain from .COM to .NET so that all our subdomains from external pages matched. Right now in Google Console we have our new .NET website being tracked, but in GA we are still tracking .COM. It is also causing issues with MOZ crawling our site because of the .COM/.NET discrepancy. My question is what is the best way to change our Google Analytics from .COM to .NET without losing historical data and what considerations do we need to change before implementing this? Our team was concerned that just downloading the old data would be too vast and it we wouldn't be able to continue manipulating it dynamically in GA. Thanks!!
Reporting & Analytics | | cPanel-LLC.0 -
Will changing the property from http to https in Google Analytics affect main unfiltered view?
I set my client up with an unfiltered view in Google Analytics. This is the one with historical data going back for years, so I don't want to do anything that will affect this view. Recently, the website moved from HTTP to HTTPS. There's a setting for the property that will allow me to change the property name to https://EXAMPLE.com and change the default URL to https://EXAMPLE.com. Questions: 1. If I change the property name and the default URL, will this somehow affect my unfiltered view in a way that I'll lose historical data or data moving forward? 2. I have heard that changing the default URL to HTTPS will help me avoid a common problem others have experienced (where they lose the referrer in Google Analytics and a bunch of their sessions go to direct / other). Is this true?
Reporting & Analytics | | Kevin_P3 -
Is there a way to filter all computers on a specific IPv6 network in Google Analytics?
Is there a quick way of filtering the IP addresses for all the computers on a network that's using IPv6? I want to filter out visits to our websites from the devices on our office network, but each computer (and phone and tablet) seems to have a different address. It _looks _like they all start the same way, though. One computer is xxxx:xxxx:xxxx:xxxx:aaaa:aaaa:aaaa:aaaa, another is xxxx:xxxx:xxxx:xxxx:bbbb:bbbb:bbbb:bbbb, my phone is xxxx:xxxx:xxxx:xxxx:cccc:cccc:cccc:cccc, etc. Does this mean that xxxx:xxxx:xxxx:xxxx is the address for our network as a whole, and I can just set up a Google Analytics filter for "IP addresses starting with..."? Or would doing that also filter out hits from, like, every visitor within a 20 mile radius of our office? If I need to simply put in the individual addresses for each and every device, I will. I'm just hoping it doesn't come to that. Thanks!
Reporting & Analytics | | BrianAlpert780 -
Conflicting average position data from Google Search Console?
I'm looking at Google Search Console data in Google Analytics, specifically Average Position as given in the Landing Page report, and the same metric broken out by mobile and desktop in the Devices report. In the Landing Page report, I see an aggregated average position that's much higher/worse than an actual average of what is reported for mobile, desktop and tablet traffic under the Device reporting. For example: Mobile: 5 Desktop: 5 Tablet: 5 So the average still should be roughly 5, right? Why would the Landing Page then show an aggregate Average Position of 8? I wouldn't expect to see a precisely same average given that different device types have different proportions that could render differently when the buckets are combined, but this is a huge swing. In fact, the aggregate Average Position as given in the top level Devices report is closer to 5 than to the 8 shown in the Landing Pages report. (These aren't actual numbers, but are illustrative of what I'm seeing, by the way.) Unless I'm missing some vital difference in the way that Average Position is reporting for the Landing Page report versus the Device reports, it doesn't seem like this should be possible. What am I missing?
Reporting & Analytics | | BradsDeals0 -
Google Analytics Organic Search Keywords Suddenly Displaying FulL Urls
In my Google Analytics, the top keywords for Organic Search are suddenyl displaying full URLs. For example, now the third and fourth keywords are http://www.domain.com/highly-specific-URL. These have all started recently around the same day, July 12th. I've checked back, and we've made no internal changes to the site around that time that could affect this. Any thoughts on this? Thanks! P.S. It might be related to rich snippets, but I cannot tell at this point.
Reporting & Analytics | | 10SL0 -
Why are plus signs (+) suddenly showing up in Google Analytics organic search keywords reports?
Since June 13, 2013, the number of organic search queries containing a plus sign (+) has gone up over 1,000% compared to the previous period on my site in Google Analytics. These plus signs appear to be taking the place of spaces in these search queries (i.e. "word1+word2+word3"). This appears to be almost (or completely) Google organic traffic, not other search engines. Since I highly doubt searcher behavior would change so suddenly, I'm trying to figure out why Google is replacing spaces with plus signs. Is anyone else seeing this? Any ideas?
Reporting & Analytics | | RCF0 -
Setting Up Google Analytic with Sub Folder Sites
What is the best way of setting up Google Analytic for a website that has many sub folders? The main site is example.com and it has 40 sub folder sites like example.com/uk example.com/France etc etc Would it be advised to track a single domain in Google Analytic then create filters for the sub folder sites. Filters > Include traffic from > Sub directories Also with this method is it possible to view overall incoming website stats for everything? Previous experience would be great with this thanks 🙂
Reporting & Analytics | | daracreative0 -
Google Analytics - paid & unpaid visits messed up
I guess Google Analytics messes up my paid and unpaid visits. In the list of top 10 kw's sending non-paid traffic it shows 5 very short kw's that we don't rank for at all (checked with RankTracker - we are not in first 50 search results). But these are the kw's we advertise for... One more proof: Webmaster Tools 'Search queries' shows 10 times less 'Clicks' from organic search than Google Analytics. Is there anyone who is experiencing this kind of problems with GA? Is there anything you can do with it?
Reporting & Analytics | | Alexey_mindvalley0