Should you get a new Google Analytics account if your site has a new domain after a site redesign/new development?
-
We recently developed a new site for a client and they have opted to move forward with a domain change. Should we create a new Google Analytics account for the new site?
-
Thanks for the feedback everyone! I think it's safe to say that we're sticking with the old Analytics account.
-
Theresa,
I'm going to support the two answers here: creating a new account is not a good use of time.
The main reason, in my mind, is just that you wouldn't have anything to compare the new site with. If you have new code, new content, new everything, it's important to compare the changes with the old site to make sure you made positive changes.
The best example I can give of a scenarios where you'd want that historic data is with any page on the site that already ranks well. After the page changed, did traffic increase? Decrease? Time of page? It's good to know how these were changed.
I'll also add, historic analytic data can help you find problems caused by the move. Disallowed robots.txt from the test site? Structure issues? Many of these can be found out from looking at your analytic data and having a baseline is important.
Hope that helps!
-
Hi, I would not advise on setting up a new account, to be honest you can easily transfer the code from the old account to the new account you can even use new code in GA.
do not set up a totally new account as you will loose historic data from the account.
-
No,
if you can use the old one, you can compare if all the migration tasks are ok. If you change the analytics account you can't compare you new traffic data with the old one.
Bye.
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
-
Free Media Site / High Traffic / Low Engagement / Strategies and Questions
Hi, Imagine a site "mediapalooza dot com" where the only thing you do there is view free media. Yet Google Analytics is showing the average view of a media page is about a minute; where the average length of media is 20 - 90 minutes. And imagine that most of this media is "classic" and that it is generally not available elsewhere. Note also that the site ranks terribly in Google, despite having decent Domain Authority (in the high 30's), Page Authority in the mid 40's and a great site and otherwise quite active international user base with page views in the tens of thousands per month. Is it possible that GA is not tracking engagement (time on site) correctly? Even accounting for the imperfect method of GA that measures "next key pressed" as a way to terminate the page as a way to measure time on page, our stats are truly abysmal, in the tenths of a percentage point of time measured when compared with actual time we think the pages are being used. If so, will getting engagement tracking to more accurately measure time on specif pages and site signal Google that this site is actually more important than current ranking indicates? There's lots of discussion about "dwell time" as this relates to ranking, and I'm postulating that if we can show Google that we have extremely good engagement instead of the super low stats that we are reporting now, then we might get a boost in ranking. Am I crazy? Has anyone got any data that proves or disproves this theory? as I write this out, I detect many issues - let's have a discussion on what else might be happening here. We already know that low engagement = low ranking. Will fixing GA to show true engagement have any noticeable impact on ranking? Can't wait to see what the MOZZERS think of this!
Reporting & Analytics | | seo_plus0 -
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 to FILTER in Google Analytics an ad campaign from linkedin?
Hi mozzers We are setting up an a linkedin ad campaign for our agency and want to track its traffic and conversions. The linkedin ad will carry UTMs for each link. For tracking this campaign accurately I thought about creating a new GA View with a specific filter. So my question is about the filtering, should i use the INCLUDE, REFERRAL with pattern LINKEDIN.COM (see image)? if not what would be the best way to track this campaign? My other concern is that we are also running other a job ad on linkedin and I feel these hits will be tracked as well. Is there a way to separate those 2 campaigns? Thanks guys! MzE5hqE.png
Reporting & Analytics | | Ideas-Money-Art0 -
How do you adjust the Google Analytics date range?
Hello! Every time I log into Google Analytics (via desktop), the date range is set to October 1, 2013 to October 28, 2013. I've looked throughout the GA settings to find a place where I change this default setting to anything else ("Last week?") but have not be able to find where that setting is. Can you help? Losing my mind,
Reporting & Analytics | | SmileMoreSEO
Erik0 -
How do I cancel a scheduled Dashboard report in Google Analytics?
I created a few Dashboards in Google Analytics and scheduled them to be emailed for the next 6 months. Now I want to cancel those scheduled emails and am not finding those Dashboard reports/emails anywhere so I can cancel them. Do you know how to stop these emails from being sent?
Reporting & Analytics | | cindyt-170380 -
Google's New Privacy Policy and Analytics
Does anybody know if Google's new privacy policy allows it to use data gathered by Analytics to be used as a ranking factor in the SERPs?
Reporting & Analytics | | Jolora0 -
Why is Webmaster Tools not Linking Correctly Google Analytics?
I have a global site with .com as the US site and then /country for all other markets i.e. .com/uk .com/de etc. Each site has it's own WMT profile. Each site has it's own GA profile. Since Google added Search Engine Optimization to the GA interface, I can't track these sites separately under this new feature. It seems to me that it can only be associated with a single WMT profile at a time or rather that WMT can only be associated with a single GA profile at a time. The numbers for the UK and US site are identical, but when I try and link the UK WMT account with GA it removes it from the US profile and vice versa.
Reporting & Analytics | | Red_Mud_Rookie0 -
Why isn´t my google analytics registering goals?
Hi everyone! I know this is is not the standard SEO question, but I hope you can help me with your knowledge. I set some goals in GA for the thankyou page that appears when a client requests more information on a property for sale. Problem is I have been testing them and the goals don´t get registered. I don´t know what am I doing wrong and I would really appreciate if you could help me through some light on this. I have attached an image of the option for the goal in GA. Can anybody help me? Paroa.png
Reporting & Analytics | | inmonova0