GA custom reports involving pages and goals - what are the metrics saying?
-
Hi, All!
I would like to create a custom report that will enable me to see which of my pages are contributing to goal completion on my site (so I can then optimize the pages that are contributing the most, with maximal ROI for the optimization investment). If I make the dimension "page/page title" and the metric "goal X completions" - which would make sense - what exactly are the numbers that I am seeing telling me? Is it how many times a person started the goal funnel from that pages (meaning every goal would appear only once and there be no overlap)? That doesn't appear to be the case with the numbers, because the headline in the main "Goals" section tells me I have 30 goal completions for that goal, for example, but the headline in the custom report (which is adding up all the numbers) is, say, 100. Or does it mean the number of times that this page was ever in the navigation path of someone who ended up completing a goal? Then the same goal would be counted multiple times, for each page in the path.
Additionally, I see this strange thing on some of my reports where the actual funnel pages appear as contributing towards goals, which I guess makes sense, but again the numbers don't match up. If the goal was to get to page B, and the funnel was A->B, and there were supposedly 30 goal completions, my custom report says that A gave 28 goal completions and B gave 25.
Anyone know for sure - or through testing - what the case is with all these things? Any explanations will be much appreciated!
-
Debi'Z, did yo uget the second part of your question answered, or do you still have questions?
-
Can you post some screenshots for the goals issue? I think it might help explain a little more clearly.
$ index supports weighted sort which will take care of figuring out which are the most important pages to work on for you
-
Thank you so much!
This was definitely helpful - especially the post from Distilled highlighting the practical use of the metric in analysis. I'm not sure this will be the most helpful metric, though, when deciding what pages would be the most valuable to optimize, because the number is an average. The Distilled post did mention filtering pages that had a lower number of pageviews, so that might compensate, but still you might end up choosing pages that have a higher $index but far less pageviews, meaning their overall contribution to revenue is less.
Is the implication of the goals metric that I mentioned above the number of goals the page contributed towards without averaging (kind of like the beginning of the $index metric, just counting "1 goal" instead of "x dollars" and not divided by pageviews)? Or is it with averaging?
Do you have an idea about the second question mentioned above - why the actual goal or funnel pages show less goal completions than there were actual goals?
Thanks!
-
Hey, I think you're asking for something like $ index. You should assign a $ value for your goal and then you'll see this metric start appearing in your reports. For more info on $ index check these out:
http://www.google.com/support/analytics/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=86205
http://www.distilled.co.uk/blog/seo/google-analytics-index-what-it-is-and-how-to-use-it/
Does that help?
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
-
In Google Analytics > Acquisition > Queries. The top query just says (other), can someone fill me in on to what this means?
I have linked the account to the Google Search Console. In top spot is says (other) followed by other keywords the (other) data is the majority.
Reporting & Analytics | | GSAstonMoz0 -
Help setting up FILTERS for External Payment pages?
Hi all, I own a webshop and believe my Google Analytics is not showing true data. At the moment when a user pays for their basket, they are redirected to an external secure payment page from my PSP, then after they have paid they are redirected back to my website. How is this visitor being counted? As the PSP-URL is a different site I assume this would be treated as an exit? Can I setup FILTERS to INCLUDE this URL so GA doesn't think its an external page or is there a better way? Thanks
Reporting & Analytics | | darrenbooy0 -
PPC ads: landing page vs website page ... other metrics to consider?
I run 3 PPC ads in Chinese language on Baidu, of which one landing page consistently ranks around 5th amongst 80+ other English website pages. So, when our site was recently developed for Chinese language, I redirected the ads to the relevant Chinese website pages for a month to see which would attract more visitors (Chinese landing pages vs Chinese website). I haven't fully analysed the results yet, but what other metrics should I consider than just the volume of visitors? Landing page
Reporting & Analytics | | SteveMauldin
https://www.mogas.com/en-us/ppc-ads/mogas-球阀
https://www.mogas.com/en-us/ball-valves (in English) Website page
https://www.mogas.com/zh-cn/产品
https://www.mogas.com/en-us/products (in English)0 -
Homepage on page 2 for site:domain
Hi all, today I noticed that our homepage is located on page 2 if you do the site:domain query. As far as I know, the site:domain results mirror the importance in the eyes of Google. Some time ago, our homepage was the first result. I have to say that we do not often have changing elements or new content on the homepage, it is more like a static page. But still the most linked to page on the domain... What conclusion can I come to? Is our homepage of lower importance to Google than some time ago? Is it a problem for SEO? As we backed down our advertisments, the traffic from branded keywords fell the last months - could this be an explanation? And, most important: do I have to worry? (Besides, the SEO-traffic is fine and growing..)
Reporting & Analytics | | accessKellyOCG0 -
Need help setting up a Google analytics goal.
I'm just now getting my feet wet with the goals in GA. I'm trying to figure out how many visitors to a certain page, click on a certain link (which takes them no a certain page on my site.) What's the best way to go about this? Thanks.
Reporting & Analytics | | NoahsDad0 -
A lot of traffic to one page from Google referral
We recently received a lot of traffic to one page from
Reporting & Analytics | | underthesun808
google.com referral. When I look in analytics it reports that the traffic is
coming from /url that’s not real helpful. Is there a way to get more specific
information as to what the referring url was?0 -
Custom Variables to track Vimeo plays on website with Google Analytics?
Hello Everyone, I'm trying to track how many times a Vimeo video is played on my site via GA. Does any of you have any knowledge of how can this be achieved? I've read the documentation and came up with this: After the iframe embed i insert this: Of course the GA is loaded in the header. Does not work, at least i cant see anything in analytics. I have set up the segment as per the attached image. Thanks in advance! Alex E6XnO.png
Reporting & Analytics | | pwpaneuro0 -
How to compare Goals in Analytics
I setup LivePerson web chat on my site. In doing so I integrated it with Google Analytics as a conversion goal so I can track the visitors that engaged in chat. I want to see the affect these chats have on my other conversion goal, a completed lead. How do I figure out the conversion % of new leads for people who have enaged in web chat vs. those who haven't?
Reporting & Analytics | | TheDude0