Google Analytics shows wrong traffic source
-
I was reviewing out traffic sources on GA for this past week's traffic history, and noticed a couple of visits & conversions that GA cited as coming from campaigns from emails that were sent out in 2012 and early 2013. it seems odd that we would have traffic & conversions from these older campaigns - on a regular basis. it's not even from one campaign, but from multiple campaigns.
is it possible that it is a cookie issue? - i wonder if these visits were really from the email campaigns - or if they were from organic searches or other sources.
Thoughts?
Thanks!
-
Thank you so much! This makes sense now. Def. a great thing that they're loyal customers. Now I know I can just attribute it to direct, this helps me better track actual campaigns.
-
Hi Sara,
It could be a cookie issue if these visitors are originally arriving through a mail link and then revisiting directly. Direct visits do not overwrite the campaign/source cookie on the users computer so the visit is attributed to whichever source last brought them to your site which was recorded. So you could have a click from a mail link, and then 10 direct visits from the same user and this would show as 11 visits from a mail link. Campaign sources are updated when the user arrives through organic search, a referral site or a tagged campaign link (mail, ppc etc) but not when a direct visit is recorded with an existing cookie value (which btw has a 6 month lifespan). Check here for the techy bit, half way down the page at 'What Causes Updates to the __utmz Campaign Cookie?' https://support.google.com/analytics/answer/2731565?hl=en
There could be a couple of other outlying scenarios (users bookmark the page from a mail link with the utm values still in the url for example) but I think the direct visits are probably the bulk of the numbers you are seeing. The flip side is that these are usually pretty dedicated customers to your brand, hence the conversions, so things are looking good
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
-
Google Analytics unexplainable traffic spike
Viewing this report **Behaviour > Site content > All pages **with primary dimensions of **Page ** and **Page title **are showing different results for one specific page on our site. We noticed a huge spike in pageviews and entrances to that specific page on our site. The user flow report shows traffic going through and from the page (in high volume) from other pages on the site which suggests that it's not the usual case of spam referrals. When I view the report above by page, I get unrealistic data. Over 600% increase in pageviews and over 900% increase in entrances. When I view by page title however, I get realistic results. Can anyone help shed some light on why these two reports will be different? Anyone else seeing similar issues?
Reporting & Analytics | | OptiBacUK0 -
How drop off works in google analytic for enhance ecommerce?
Hello Guys, I have implemented enhance ecommerce ( i.e. - https://developers.google.com/tag-manager/enhanced-ecommerce ) Now i have query how drops off actually works? Like i visited the my site, then product page then checkout step 1 page after that i close the checkout step 1 page that means checkout step 1 drop off will appear in google analytic? right? John
Reporting & Analytics | | varo0 -
What is the best way to embed Google Analytics charts on our site?
We want to build out this functionality so a client can log into our site and view data. I know its possible but I can't find any articles about the steps so that my team can move forward.
Reporting & Analytics | | appbackr0 -
Re-branding with Google Analytics
GM Mozzers, I apologize in advance if my description of this issue is confusing, but I'm doing my best here. Anyway, due to legal reasons, one of the publications I manage was forced to change their name. We set-up a 301 redirect from the previous domain and have also set-up an analytics profile for the new domain, however, as it stands, visits to the old domain outnumber those to the new domain 12:1. Is there anyway to set-up my analytics profile to the new URL so that this traffic is being attributed to the new domain and the new site, since, after all, it is a redirect. I hope that I explained this sufficiently. Any and all insight will be very much appreciated. Thank you in advance.
Reporting & Analytics | | NiallSmith0 -
Traffic Down for Most Referrers - not just Google
Our traffic has taken a severe hit, over the past 3 weeks - down about 60%, which I had assumed was caused by the Penguin update. However on closer inspection of our analytics, our traffic is is down by between 30 and 50% for nearly all our referrers - including Bing and other search engines, referring sites, and even direct traffic! Google provides the vast majority of our traffic, so in terms of the absolute visitor count, the drop in Google traffic has the biggest effect - by some distance. But the fact that traffic is down by similar percentages suggest that Penguin isn't the cause of our troubles at all. We sell garden products in the UK, and it's just coming into peak season. Last year, May was one of our top months, External conditions - such as the very wet weather over the past month, economic gloom and doom - don't begin to explain this sudden and dramatic drop in traffic. We are very perplexed. If anyone has any bright ideas, I'd be interested to hear them. Ben
Reporting & Analytics | | atticus70 -
Google Webmaster Dropped Traffic
Hi Guys, I've recently implemented a new site design with a new url architecture etc.. I set up Google Webmaster tools in early March and went live with the new site on 2nd April. Since the 6th April (4 days after going live) I've notice a drop in impressions from 15,000 - 28,000 per day to 3,500 - 5,500 per day. Now I'm kind of new to this, so after I cleaned up after my initial panic, I checked impressions vs. clicks. Impression are down 44% and clicks 31%. Not bad I thought but then again what if I dropped so far off the radar I never made an impression. 1. So first question: Are the number of impressions of a keyword independant of ranking. So if I rank #3,445,234th will I still see impressions listed but avg. position reflect #3,445,234? So while I was thinking of asking these questions I checked Google Analytics for which I have just over 3 years of metrics. Compared to the past; overall traffic and organic traffic are the same if not 10-20% better. 2. So second: Am I missing something? Its a resort website so easter just ended and you would expect the traffic to match and drop, but such a sudden and dramitic drop in Webmaster Tools impressions does not match Google Analytics. Infact Organic traffic climbed slightly. Can anyone offer any insight? Thanks, Adam
Reporting & Analytics | | NaescentAdam0 -
X2 Google Analytics affect page rank ?
Hi there, If you had 2 Google Analytics Accounts one to the main site and another to the blog, could this affect the page position in Google? We've suddenly noticed a drop in our KWs and it was shortly after we added another Google Analytics Account. The blog has 68% Bounce rate and the main site has always been about 48%. Any help would be much appreciated. Many thanks Paul
Reporting & Analytics | | webdesigncwd0 -
Google Analytics censoring keywords?
The top keyword on our real time GA is showing as a blank. There's a topic of a sexual nature in our talk threads trending on Twitter right now which is driving a lot of traffic and I'm wondering whether Google have censored the keyword. The next few keywords are our name and variants of. Could there be some other reason why this word isn't showing up? Has anyone else experienced this?
Reporting & Analytics | | CecilyP0